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t 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 












» 



TWO WILD CHERRIES SERIES 
By HOWARD R. GARIS 


TWO WILD CHERRIES 
How Dick and Janet Lost Something 

TWO WILD CHERRIES IN THE COUNTRY 
How Dick and Janet Saved the Mill 

TWO WILD CHERRIES IN THE WOODS 
How Dick and Janet Caught the Bear 

TWO WILD CHERRIES AT THE SEASHORE 
How Dick and Janet were Shipwrecked 































































































“Bless my gasoline!” 


cried the Taxi driver. 







—Page 12 




TWO 

WILD CHERRIES 

OR 

HOW DICK AND JANET 
LOST SOMETHING 

BY 

HOWARD R. GARIS 

«» 

Author of “Rick and Ruddy,” “Rick and Ruddy Afloat,” 
“Rick and Ruddy Out West,” “Rick and 
Ruddy in Camp,” etc. 

ILLUSTRATED BY 

JOHN M. FOSTER 


1924 

MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY 

SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS 






Copyright, 1924, by 

MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY 
Publishers 


Two Wild Cherries 


Bradley Qualify Books 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

MAY 22 24 

© Cl A 7 9 330 6 
"wo 1 




w-i-i- 


r ■ 

$ 

CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Wheelbarrow Ride .i 

II. Grandma’s Cameo Pin.13 

III. Off to the Gipsy Camp .... 27 

IV. Janet Runs Away.36 

V. A Barrel of Fun.46 

VI. A Woodland Picnic.57 

VII. The Missing Basket.65 

VIII. An Indian Trail.74 

IX. The Fortune Teller.85 

X. The Red Wagon.96 

XI. Jiggles and Wiggles .no 

XII. Gipsy Life.119 

XIII. The Search.130 

XIV. In the Woods.138 

XV. Found at Last.148 

XVI. On the Raft.159 

XVII. “It’s a Whale!”.171 

XVIII. Runaway Rollers.181 

XIX. Janet in a Tangle.191 

XX. Wild West.203 

XXI. Gassy Runs Away.214 

XXII. On the Trail.225 

XXIII. The Camp Fire. 2Z2 

XXIV. A Night Ride.243 

XXV. In the Horse Blanket.254 



























f 





TWO WILD CHERRIES 


CHAPTER I 

A WHEELBARROW RIDE 

“What do you get the most of for a penny, 
Aunt Sallie?” 

“Get cinnamon beans, Dick! Get cinnamon 
beans! You get a whole handful for a cent!” 

Two children—a boy with dark, waving hair 
and red cheeks, and a girl whose blue eyes 
laughed merrily beneath her golden curls— 
stood in front of the candy counter of a little 
store. Anxiously they looked at the sweets be¬ 
hind the glass. 

“Do you get most cinnamon beans for a 
penny, Aunt Sallie ?” asked the boy. 

“Well,” replied the little old lady, as she 
patted back her gray hair and smiled at the 
children, “you get get quite a few; yes.” 

“More than you do of licorice drops?” the 
boy wanted to know. 


2 


Two Wild Cherries 


“I don't like licorice drops!" exclaimed the 
girl. “Get the red cinnamon beans, Dick— 
they're the best!" 

She stood first on one foot then on the other, 
fairly dancing about. 

“All right, Janet!" decided her brother. “A 
penny's worth of cinnamon beans, Aunt Sallie, 
if you please," he ordered. 

He passed the penny across the glass show 
case and received the little bag of candies. 
Somehow, now that the candies were in a bag, 
there didn’t seem to be so very many of them 
after all. Dick opened the bag and looked in, 
rather disappointed. He wished he had taken 
licorice drops. 

“Half of 'em's mine!" cried Janet. “You 
got to give me half, 'cause mother said you 
must!" 

“All right—I will—wait a minute, can't 
you?" and Dick was just the least little bit im¬ 
patient. 

“And you got to divide 'em right here in the 
store—count 'em out on the show case!" 
insisted Janet. “Then you won’t drop any in 
the dirt—and you always say they're my can¬ 
dies that fall in the dirt," went on the little girl. 


A Wheelbarrow Ride 3 

“Oh—all right!" agreed Dick. “Wait a 
minute, can't you?" 

“Yes, my dears, it would be better to divide 
them in here," said Mrs. Sarah Patten who kept 
the candy and toy store. “Aunt Sallie" she 
was, to every boy and girl in Vernon. 

Dick tipped the bag upside down, emptying 
the red candies out. One of them rolled to the 
floor. 

“There! I s'pose you'll say that's mine 
'cause it fell!" cried Janet, with scorn in her 
voice. 

“No, I'll take it," chuckled her brother. “It's 
a big one!" 

“Oh!" gasped Janet. And again: “Oh!" 

Then she remained quiet for Dick had begun 
“counting out," making two piles of cinnamon 
beans, one for himself and one for his sister. 
This was serious work—too much talking 
might mix up the count. But at last it was 
over. Dick added the last bean to his sister’s 
pile and at once Janet set up a cry: 

“Oh, you gave me an awful little one—that 
last! It wasn't half a bean!" 

“I gave you that extra!" declared Dick. “It 
was left over and—" 


4 


Two Wild Cherries 


“Oh, did you! Thanks!” and Janet smiled, 
now. 

Picking up her red candies she made a dash 
for the door. 

“Wait a minute!” begged her brother. 
Some of his candies spilled to the floor in his 
haste at gathering them up. “Wait a minute! 
I dropped some!” 

“Can’t wait!” Janet flung back over her 
shoulder as she shook her golden curls. “Pm 
going to play with Lulu Wilson.” 

“I thought you were going to play cowboy 
and Indian with me!” shouted Dick as he 
managed to find the last candy and dashed out 
after his sister. “I’ll let you wear my feather 
hat and be Indian if you want to! Hi, Janet— 
wait—a minute— Oh—wait—” 

His voice became a cry of distress as he 
tripped just outside the candy store and fell, 
scattering his red cinnamon beans all over the 
sidewalk. 

“Oh, Dick!” murmured Janet sorrowfully as 
she turned in time to see what had happened. 
She ran back to help her brother pick up his 
candy. 


A Wheelbarrow Ride 


5 


“My, what wild children!” remarked old 
Mrs. Batton who had just entered the store to 
buy a spool of thread, for Aunt Sallie kept 
“notions” as well as candy and toys. “Two 
harum-scarum youngsters!” and old Mrs. Bat- 
ton screwed her face into more wrinkles than 
she really needed. 

“Yes, they are a bit wild,” answered Aunt 
Sallie with a smile. “But they are kind and 
good. Two wild cherries I call them.” 

“Ha! That’s a good name for them!” de¬ 
cided Mrs. Batton. “They are Cherry by name 
and wild by nature—two Wild Cherries! Very 
good! I never thought of that before!” 

“Oh, I’ve called ’em that in my own mind 
a long time,” said Aunt Sallie. “They come in 
here nearly every day with a penny or two to 
spend. They’re my best customers—the two 
Wild Cherries.” 

“Well, they certainly act wild!” said Mrs. 
Batton as she turned to leave with her spool of 
thread. “Look at ’em now—as wild as 
hawks!” 

For Dick and Janet Cherry, having gathered 
up the scattered candies, were dashing down 


6 


Two Wild Cherries 


the street toward their home, not far from the 
toy store, on a pleasant street in the quiet little 
country village of Vernon. 

Dick and Janet were the only children of Mr. 
and Mrs. Robert Cherry, and sometimes Mrs. 
Cherry said she wouldn't know what to do if 
she had more boys or girls like the two wild 
ones. But Mr. Cherry, who owned a hardware 
store in the village, used to laugh and say he 
liked to see children lively and full of fun. 

“Full of fun!” exclaimed his wife. “Why 
Dick and Janet are so full of fun that it runs 
out of their ears and eyes! My goodness! I 
wonder what they’ll do next!” 

However Dick and Janet never did anything 
very bad—full of mischief they were, and some¬ 
times they got into trouble, but they never 
meant to, and always said they never would do 
it again—but sometimes they did. 

“Come on now—we’ll play cowboy and 
Indian!” proposed Dick, when he and his sis¬ 
ter reached home after their trip to the candy 
store. 

“You said you’d let me take your feather 
hat,” said Janet. 

“Sure I will! I’ll get it.” 


A Wheelbarrow Ride 


7 


Dick hurried into the house and came out 
with a gay bunch of feathers inserted in a 
band of cloth. It could be fastened around 
the head, the feathers hanging down one’s back, 
as the Indians formerly wore their war bonnets. 

“Put it on, Janet,” said Dick, tossing the 
feathers to his sister. ‘Til get the wheel¬ 
barrow.” 

“What are you going to do with the wheel¬ 
barrow?” asked the little girl, who was two 
years younger than her brother. 

“I’m going to give you a ride,” answered 
Dick. 

“Indians don’t ride in wheelbarrows ” objec¬ 
ted Janet. “Who ever heard of an Indian rid¬ 
ing in a wheelbarrow?” 

“Well, of course I know they don’t, really,” 
admitted Dick. “But we’ll make believe the 
wheelbarrow is an Indian pony, and you’re 
riding on his back and you must chase me. 
I’ll be a white settler and you must come after 
me and whoop like an Indian.” 

“But how can I chase after you if you’re 
pushing me in the wheelbarrow?” objected 
Janet. “I don’t see—” 

“Ah, say, can’t you make-believe that, too?” 


8 


Two Wild Cherries 


asked Dick, with an impatient upward fling of 
his hands. “You got to make believe real hard 
if you’re going to play Indian. I’ll be a white 
settler and an Indian pony at the same time. 
All you got to be is the Indian.” 

“Oh—all right,” agreed Janet. “Get the 
wheelbarrow.” 

Dick started for it, but paused to come back 
and ask : 

“You s:ot any of those red cinnamon candies 
left?” 

“Maybe I got two or three,” cautiously ad¬ 
mitted Janet, “but I aren’t going to give you 
any—you had your share and—” 

“Oh, say I don’t want to eat ’em!” declared 
Dick. “But if you have any red candies just 
wet ’em and rub the red part on your face.” 

“What for?” asked Janet in surprise as she 
reached in her little pocket and brought out two 
damp, sticky candies. “What do I have to rub 
’em on my face for?” 

“To make red paint same as like the Indians 
have,” replied Dick. “All Indians are painted 
when they go on the war path and that’s where 
you’re going. Rub the red candy on your 
face.” 


A Wheelbarrow Ride 


9 


Janet did so, streaking her cheeks, chin and 
forehead with the brilliant red of the cinnamon 
drops. 

“That’s fine!” cried Dick. “You look just 
like a real Indian now.” 

“I hope it’ll wash off,” murmured Janet. 
“If mother sees me—” 

“She won’t see you,” broke in Dick, with a 
glance toward the house. He and his sister 
were walking toward the lower end of the yard 
where the wheelbarrow was kept in a little 
shed with the other garden tools. “Now you 
wait here, Jan, and I’ll give you a ride.” 

“All right,” agreed the little girl. “Should 
I put a dab of red on my nose?” she asked. 
“I got one more candy left.” 

“Yes, go ahead, put some on your nose,” 
decided Dick. 

“Then I’m going to eat the candies after the 
red is all off,” declared Janet. And this she 
did. She sat there on a box, waiting for her 
brother to come back with the wheelbarrow—a 
little girl with blue eyes, tangled golden curls 
and a face all streaked and spotted by the red 
cinnamon candy. 

“Here I come! Whoopee-whoop! Whoopee- 


10 


Two Wild Cherries 


whoop!” yelled Dick at the top of his voice as 
he dashed around the corner of the tool house 
the wheelbarrow rattling and bumping before 
him as he pushed it along the path. 

“What are you hollering for?” demanded 
Janet. 

“That’s the way Indians always holler,” 
said Dick. 

“Well I thought you said I was to be the 
Indian. I got red paint on my face and—” 
Janet looked at her brother. 

“Oh, well,” he replied, “I was just showing 
you how to do it. Now you get in the wheel¬ 
barrow and yell like I did. Then we’ll go down 
in the meadow and make believe have a tent, 
and it’ll be lots of fun.” 

Janet took her place and Dick started off on 
the run, guiding the barrow around the front 
walk. As he passed the side of the house Mrs. 
Cherry could be heard calling: 

“Children! Children! Where are you? 
What are you doing?” 

“We’re going to play Indian, mother!” 
answered Dick. 

“Well, come here a minute, please. I have 
some news for you!” 


A Wheelbarrow Ride 


ii 


“Oh, what you s'pose it is?” gasped 
Janet. 

“We'll find out after a while,” said Dick. 
“We got to play Indian now.” 

“No! No! Let me out! I want to hear 
what mother is going to tell!” objected Janet. 
“Let me out, Dick!” 

But Dick, with a whoop, started wheeling the 
barrow faster. Around the corner of the 
house he swung and down the front walk. 
And, as he did so, a little old lady—a dear old 
lady dressed neatly in black, and with beauti¬ 
ful white hair—started up the walk toward the 
front door. She had just alighted from one of 
the depot taxicabs, and was evidently coming 
on a visit for behind her the taxi driver carried 
her valise. 

With head down Dick pushing the wheel¬ 
barrow before him, did not see the old lady. 
Nor did Janet, for she was sitting facing her 
brother and she was begging him to stop and let 
her out. 

“Nope! This Indian pony doesn't stop! 
Whoopee!” yelled the boy. 

Mrs. Cherry by this time had opened the 
front door. She saw the old lady coming up 


12 Two Wild Cherries 

the walk and she saw the two Wild Cherries 
headed straight for her. 

“Dick! Janet!” cried their mother. “Look 
out! You’ll run into your—” 

She did not have time to finish, nor did Dick 
have a chance to heed the warning. On he 
dashed, and a moment later the two Wild 
Cherries, wheelbarrow and all, had run into the 
dear old lady, knocking her down on the walk. 

“Oh! Oh, my dears!” she gasped, as she 
fell. 

“Bless my gasolene!” cried the taxi driver, 
pop-eyed with wonder. 

“Oh, Dick! Look what you did!” sobbed 
Janet. 

And there they were—all in a heap! The 
little old lady sitting up on the walk, Janet, ly¬ 
ing on her back as she was spilled from the 
wheelbarrow, with her cheeks red-spotted and 
the Indian feathers in her hair. Dick, tangled 
in the handles of the “pony,” and the taxicab 
driver looking on, his eyes popping out more 
and more each second. 

“Oh! Oh, my goodness!” cried Mrs. Cherry 
as she ran down the steps to see who was the 
most hurt. 


CHAPTER II 
grandma’s cameo pin 

“Children! Oh, children! Why did you 
do it?” cried Mrs. Cherry as she helped the 
little old lady to rise, and dust off her dress. 

“We—we—now—we couldn’t help it!” 
gasped Dick, who was out of breath from his 
fast run with the wheelbarrow. “Is she hurt 
any—I— Oh—why, it’s Grandma!” he ex¬ 
claimed in delight as he caught sight of the 
smiling face of the old lady. “It’s Grandma 
Cherry!” 

“Of course it is, my dear!” spoke the old lady 
with a smile and a laugh which seemed to show 
that she was not much hurt, if at all. She 
stood up and smoothed down her dress. “Of 
course I’m Grandma Cherry, but I didn’t expect 
to be greeted like this. It’s—well, really it’s 
quite a surprise!” and again she laughed. 

“You may well say it’s a surprise, ma’am,” 
remarked the taxicab driver who was trying to 
13 


14 


Two Wild Cherries 


lift up Janet from near the overturned wheel¬ 
barrow. “Bless my spark plugs!" he ex¬ 
claimed, “but I'm afraid the little girl's hurt!" 

He picked Janet up in his arms and pointed to 
the streaks of red on her face. Janet had re¬ 
mained very quiet after the collision with the 
white-haired old lady. 

“Oh, the poor little dear! She's cut—she's 
bleeding!" cried Grandma Cherry. “You 
must send for the doctor, Helen! Please carry 
her into the house," she directed the taxi man. 

Then Janet began to wiggle, and her voice, 
which she had lost for a little while, following 
the crash, came back to her. 

“I'm not hurt!" she exclaimed. “I'm all 
right!" 

“But there's blood on your face, my dear!" 
said Grandma. 

“No'm—that’s just red cinnamon candy 
juice," explained Janet. “Dick and I—we 
were playing Indian and I was the Indian 
and—" 

“We—we—now we didn't mean to run into 
you, Grandma!" explained Dick. “I didn't see 
you, and—" 

“It's all right, my dear, it's all right!" softly 


Grandma's Cameo Pin 


15 


laughed Grandma Cherry who had come to 
visit her son, as she often did. “1'm not a bit 
hurt.” 

“You're all dust, ma'am,” said the taxi man 
who had set Janet down on the walk. “My, 
but you’re all dust and—” 

“That will brush off,” murmured the old 
lady. “Accidents will happen. Fm glad the 
children aren't harmed. But when I saw that 
red on Janet's face—” 

“I can lick some of it off with my tongue,” 
said the little girl, which she proceeded to do, 
sticking out her tongue and winding it as far 
outside and around her mouth as she could 
make it reach. She did manage to clear off 
some of the red cinnamon streaks from her 
chin, but those on her cheeks and forehead and 
nose still remained, glaring red. 

“I can almost get 'em off my nose,” said 
Janet. “Almost!” 

“Please don’t try,” begged her mother, as she 
saw the tongue stretched out again. “Go in 
the house and wash your face, Janet.” 

“Oh, can't we play Indian?” begged Dick. 
“We were going to have a lot of fun, and the 
wheelbarrow was the horse and—” 


i6 


Two Wild Cherries 


“He was rather a skittish horse, I should 
say,” observed the taxicab man with a smile. 
“You sure were stepping on the gas, my boy, 
as you came around that corner. Your brakes 
didn’t hold, I guess.” 

“There aren’t any brakes on a wheelbarrow,” 
said Dick. 

“There could be make believe ones,” spoke 
Janet, with a smile at the taxi driver. 

“Oh, yes—of course,” agreed her brother. 
“But say—we don’t want to play Indian any 
more, now Grandma is here,” he said. 

“No, I don’t guess so,” assented Janet. 
“Can you stay a long time, Grandma?” she 
asked. 

“Well, as long as you want me to, I guess,” 
answered the old lady, with a smile as she 
walked up the path with Mrs. Cherry, the taxi- 
cab man following and carrying her valise. 

“We want you to stay forever!” burst out 
Dick. 

“Oh, yes—forever!” echoed Janet. 

“Well, we’ll see about it,” said Grandma 
Cherry. 

“Put the wheelbarrow back in the tool house, 
Dick, if you please,” his mother told him, for 


Grandma's Cameo Pin 17 

he was walking along, having left the barrow 
in the middle of the yard. 

“Oh, yes,” he exclaimed. “Well play Indian 
after dinner,” he told his sister. “Well have a 
lot of fun then!” 

“Um,” Janet murmured. “But if I wash the 
red cinnamon juice off my face I won’t look like 
an Indian.” 

“Never mind,” whispered Dick, as he started 
back to put away the wheelbarrow. “Maybe 
Grandmall give us each a penny and we can buy 
more candy from Aunt Sallie.” 

For dear old Grandmother Cherry always 
brought the two Wild Cherries something when 
she came to visit them. She loved the children 
as much as they loved her, and she laughed at 
the queer things they did. 

“It certainly is the best name that could be 
found for them,” the old lady had said more 
than once—“two Wild Cherries!” 

“I do hope, Mother, that you aren’t hurt or 
shaken up by your fall,” said Mrs. Cherry when 
she was sitting quietly in the house with the 
old lady. Though Grandma was Mr. Cherry’s 
mother, his wife called her by the same name 
as she did her own mother. 


18 Two Wild Cherries 

“Bless you, no, I’m all right!” laughed 
Grandma Cherry. “I was shaken up a bit, 
that’s true, but it will do me good, I’m sure.” 

“You never know what Dick and Janet are 
going to do next,” went on their mother with a 
sigh. 

“Well, perhaps it’s just as well you don’t 
know,” laughed Grandma Cherry. “And now 
tell me all the news.” 

In the midst of the talk Dick and Janet en¬ 
tered the room, quietly enough, for they were 
on their good behavior, now that company was 
present. 

“Come in, my dears, and see me,” invited 
Grandma. “I think I may have something for 
you in my bag, if you will hand it to me.” 

You may be sure Dick lost no time in hand¬ 
ing his grandmother the valise. The old lady 
opened it. She took out a little doll for Janet, 
and for Dick a jumping Jack that danced and 
cut up all sorts of queer capers when his string 1 
was pulled. 

“Oh, what a lovely doll!” murmured Janet. 

“This is a dandy jumping Jack!” cried Dick. 

“Thank you, Grandma,” added Janet, going 
over to kiss the old lady. 


Grandma's Cameo Pin 19 

‘Thanks/’ murmured Dick. He was in 
rather a hurry to take his new toy out to show 
his chum Henry Merton. 

Grandma Cherry took Janet up on her lap for 
a moment, and the little girl’s eyes rested on 
a wonderful and beautiful pink and white 
carved pin, set in a band of gold, amid the filmy 
lace at the old lady’s throat. 

“What kind of a breastpin is that, 
Grandma?” asked Janet. 

“It is an old-fashioned pin called a cameo,” 
was the answer. “It is carved from a sea shell, 
and I have had it ever since I was a little girl. 
I prize it very much.” 

“Yes, I always admired your cameo pin, 
Mother,” said Mrs. Cherry. 

“I shall give it to Janet when I have no more 
use for it,” said Grandma. “It is, I believe, 
quite valuable, and I should hate to lose it. It 
belonged to my mother and she gave it to me. 
But there, I guess you children want to run 
out and play—just a moment—I think I have 
something else for you,” and she began fumb¬ 
ling in her pocket as Janet slid to the floor from 
Grandma’s lap. 

“There you are—five cents for each of you!” 


20 


Two Wild Cherries 


announced the old lady, passing the coins to the 
children. 

“Oh, Mother! You shouldn’t!” objected 
Mrs. Cherry. 

“Tut! Tut, my dear! Children must have 
some fun in this world,” chuckled Grandma 
Cherry. “Now run along, but don’t make 
yourselves ill on too much candy.” 

“No’m—we won’t!” chorused the two Wild 
Cherries as they hurried from the room. 

“Let’s go get more red cinnamon candies and 
we’ll both be Indians,” said Dick to his sister 
when they were out in the yard. 

“All right,” she agreed. “Then you can put 
red streaks and spots on your face, too.” 

“Sure I will!” agreed Dick. 

“But I don’t want any more wheelbarrow 
rides,” objected Janet. “I don’t like to be 
dumped out.” 

“I won’t dump you out again,” promised her 
brother. 

“No, I don’t want any more wheelbarrow 
rides,” repeated Janet as she shook her head. 
“Can’t you make a tent and we’ll both get in 
it and be Indians ?” 


Grandma's Cameo Pin 


21 


Dick thought it over for a moment and then 
said: 

“I can get a horse blanket from the barn. 
That'll make a fine tent." 

“Oh, yes!” agreed his sister. 

They hurried to Aunt Sallie's store to buy 
more red candies. 

“My! What's this? Christmas?" asked 
the store-keeper as she saw that each of the 
children had five cents. 

“Grandma's come," announced Dick. “But 
I'm not going to buy all red cinnamon drops," 
he told his sister. “A penny’s worth will be 
enough to play Indian with." 

“I guess so," said Janet. So they spent some 
time picking out other kinds of candy for the 
remaining four cents each. And then Janet 
with her doll and Dick with his new jumping 
Jack, went back home. 

Behind the house was a building that had 
once been a barn, but which had been turned 
into a garage when Mr. Cherry sold his horses 
and bought an automobile. There were still, 
however, some horse blankets in the barn, and 
they were used in winter to throw over the 


22 Two Wild Cherries 

radiator of the auto so the water in it wouldn't 
freeze. 

With one of these blankets Dick and Janet 
made a tent on the edge of the meadow, near 
the duck pond, into which flowed a little brook 
of water. Dick fastened the blanket up on some 
sticks so he and his sister could crawl under it. 

“Now we're like real Indians," he said as 
they streaked and spotted their faces a brilliant 
red with the cinnamon candies. “Whoop-ee!" 

“Whoop-ee!" yelled Janet. 

They had lots of fun playing Indian, but 
after a while Janet remarked: 

“Don’t Indians ever eat?" 

“Sure they do," said Dick. “Indians get 
hungry same as anybody else." 

“Then let's go up to the house and get some¬ 
thing to eat—I'm hungry," said Janet. 

“So'm I," added Dick. “I guess it's dinner 
time, anyhow." 

And so it was, for as the two Wild Cherries 
reached the house, dragging after them the 
horse blanket they had used for a tent, their 
mother called them to wash and get ready to 
come to the table. 


Grandma's Cameo Pin 


23 


The blanket was hung over the rail of the 
side porch, and Grandma sat out there in a 
chair, listening to Janet and Dick tell of their 
play, while the cook served up the meal. 

“Grandma, could I just wear your cameo pin 
for a little while ?” begged Janet. “Could I 
just wear it while I eat my dinner?” 

“Yes, I guess so,” said the old lady. She 
unfastened the cameo from the lace at her 
throat and pinned it on Janet's dress. 

“Oh, my dear! Don’t let anything happen to 
Grandma’s cameo!” warned Mrs. Cherry as the 
children sat at table. 

“I’ll be careful!” promised Janet. 

The meal was nearly over when Jane the 
cook came in to say: 

“Excuse me, Mrs. Cherry, but there’s a boy 
begging at the back door. He says he’s hungry 
—shall I give him something to eat?” 

“Oh, yes, do!” begged Janet and Dick. 

“What sort of a boy is he?” asked Mrs. 
Cherry. “Perhaps he is looking for work, and 
Mr. Cherry might need a boy down at the hard¬ 
ware store.” 

“I think he’s a Gipsy boy,” answered Jane, 


24 Two Wild Cherries 

“and they don’t generally like to work in 
stores.” 

“Oh, a Gipsy!” cried Janet. “I want to see 
him!” 

“Are there Gipsies around here?” asked 
Grandma Cherry. 

“Yes, a few,” said Mrs. Cherry. “They 
live in tents and wagons down near the cran¬ 
berry bog. The men trade horses and the 
women pretend to tell fortunes. Of course 
that’s silly. No one can really tell fortunes. 
I suppose this may be one of the Gipsy boys. 
Give him something, Jane.” 

“I want to see him,” exclaimed Janet, and, 
before they could stop her, she ran out on the 
side porch. From there she watched the dark- 
skinned and ragged boy depart with a bundle of 
food Jane gave him. “Come back and finish 
your dinner, Janet!” called her mother. 

“I’d like to go down to the Gipsy camp,” 
spoke Dick. “Was there anybody with him, 
Janet—I mean any men or women Gipsies?” 

“Nope. Just a boy. He was dark, like an 
Indian,” Janet answered. 

“That reminds me,” said Mrs. Cherry. “I 
don’t want you children to play Indian any 


Grandma's Cameo Pin 


25 


more to-day. Don't put any more red candy 
stuff on your faces, either. Play something 
else." 

“All right," agreed Janet. “Pm going to 
play with my doll, anyhow." 

“Then I’ll take my jumping Jack over and 
show Henry Merton," said Dick. 

“Before you go, my dear, I want you to carry 
back to the barn the old horse blanket you used," 
said his mother. 

“Yes’m, I will," promised Dick, and he did. 

When he came back to the porch to get his 
jumping Jack there was a scene of excitement. 

“What do you think you did with it, Janet, 
dear?" asked her mother in serious tones. 

“Why, I didn’t do anything with it," an¬ 
swered the little girl. “I just had it pinned on 
my dress and—" 

“What’s the matter ?’’ asked Dick, wondering 
what had happened. 

“Grandma’s lovely cameo pin is gone!" an¬ 
swered his mother. “She let Janet wear it dur¬ 
ing dinner, but now it is gone!" 

“I—I now went to take it off to give back 
to Grandma," said the little girl, and her voice 
sounded as if she were going to cry. “But it 


26 


Two Wild Cherries 


wasn’t on my dress. It must have come un¬ 
fastened and fell off. Oh dear!” 

There were tears in Janet’s eyes now. 

“If it had dropped around here we ought to 
find it,” said Grandma, and she, too, looked 
serious. “I saw it on you when you ran out 
on the side porch to look at the Gipsy boy 
and—” 

“Oh, I know!” suddenly cried Dick. “That 
Gipsy boy! He took Grandma’s cameo pin! 
I’ll chase after him and make him give it back!” 

Off started Dick on the run. 


CHAPTER III 

OFF TO THE GIPSY CAMP 

Janet Cherry, who was always ready to do 
what her wild brother did, made a dash after 
him. She, too, would try to catch the Gipsy 
lad who might have taken Grandma’s cameo 
pin. But the mother of the two Cherries had 
other ideas. 

“Dick, come back here!” she called. “Janet 
—you, too!” 

“But, mother,” pleaded Dick, “if I don’t run 
after that boy he’ll get away off in the woods 
with Grandma’s pin, and we’ll never get it back! 
Please let me chase him!” 

“I can run fast, too!” added Janet. “I’ll 
help Dick get him!” 

Mrs. Cherry shook her head. 

“No, you can’t do that,” she said, decidedly. 
“I don’t believe that Gipsy boy had anything 
to do with the lost pin—do you, mother?” she 
asked Grandma Cherry. 

27 


28 


Two Wild Cherries 


The old lady, whose face had an anxious 
look, shook her head. 

“I don’t see how he could have taken my pin,” 
she answered. “Janet had it on all the while 
she was at the table. She ran out here on the 
side porch to look at the Gipsy lad and it was 
soon after this we noticed that the pin was 
gone. But did the Gipsy boy come around to 
the side porch where Janet must have dropped 
my pin ?” 

“We’ll find out about that,” decided Mrs. 
Cherry. “I’ll ask Jane.” 

“No’m,” answered the cook, when she had 
been called in from the kitchen. “That Gipsy 
boy didn’t come only to the back stoop. I left 
him there when I went to ask you if I should 
give him something to eat, and he was there 
when I got back and handed him some bread 
and meat. He didn’t go to the side porch at 
all.” 

“Well, if he didn’t take the pin,” said Dick, 
“then it ought to be here—on the porch or 
somewhere. Do you know where you dropped 
it, Janet?” 

“Course not!” answered his sister. “If I 


Off to the Gipsy Camp 29 

did, I’d go pick it up. Oh, Grandma, I’m so 
sorry I lost your lovely pin!" she sobbed. 

‘'Never mind, my dear, you didn't mean to do 
it," murmured old Mrs. Cherry kindly. "And 
I dare say we shall find the cameo in some crack 
or corner. It must have come unfastened from 
your dress and dropped off. Once before it 
did that when I was wearing it. I looked for 
my pin a long time, and finally found it in a 
corner where it had rolled. I wouldn't want 
that poor Gipsy boy arrested for something he 
didn't do." 

"Well, I'm sure he took it," said Dick. 
"He could have sneaked around to the side 
porch when Jane was in talking to you, 
Mother." 

"But the pin was on Janet then," said Mrs. 
Cherry. 

"Well, anyhow, that Gipsy boy might have 
sneaked around and picked it up after Janet 
dropped it and it rolled on the side porch," went 
on Dick. "Maybe he didn't mean to take it, 
but he has it, and if I could chase after him I 
could get it back." 

"No, my dear," spoke Grandma gently, 


30 


Two Wild Cherries 


“well look around here first. Perhaps we may 
find my cameo in some nook or corner.” 

So Dick turned back and he and Janet, the 
latter with tears in her eyes, searched all over 
the dining room and side porch for the missing 
ornament. Janet was not really very good at 
looking for lost pins just then because she was 
crying. And all that Grandma or Mrs. Cherry 
could say did not make the little girl feel any 
happier. She was sure it was her fault that 
the pin was lost. 

And lost it certainly seemed to be—lost or 
taken—for it could not be found. Every inch 
of the side porch was looked over, and Jane 
even used the broom to sweep it so she could 
get in all the corners. 

“The pin isn’t here/’ said Mrs. Cherry com¬ 
ing in off the porch after a careful search. “It 
must have dropped in the dining room.” 

But the cameo pin could not be found there, 
either, though a most careful hunt was made, 
every chair being taken out and the table moved. 
The search lasted until afternoon, and Daddy 
Cherry, coming home from his hardware store, 
was quite surprised to see the dining room so 
upset. 


Off to the Gipsy Camp 31 

“Why, Mother! I didn’t expect you until 
this evening!” he exclaimed as he kissed the 
smiling, gray-haired old lady. “I was coming 
to meet you, but you got ahead of me.” 

“I had a very good reception, though,” she 
said. “Your two Wild Cherries met me with 
the wheelbarrow.” 

“The wheelbarrow!” cried Mr. Cherry. 
“The wheelbarrow! Why—” 

“We bumped into her!” exclaimed Dick. 
“Janet and I were playing wild Indian and—” 

“You should be more careful,” Dick’s father 
warned him when he had heard the story. 
“But what is going on here?” he asked as he 
saw the disordered dining room. “Are you 
playing wild Indian here?” 

“It’s your mother’s cameo pin,” exclaimed his 
wife. 

Mr. Cherry looked serious. Well he knew 
how his mother prized that historic keepsake. 

“Have you looked everywhere?” asked the 
father of the two Wild Cherries, when he had 
heard the story of the lost pin. 

“I don’t see where else we could look,” his 
wife answered. “Dick thought the Gipsy boy 
might have taken it, but I hardly think so. 


32 


Two Wild Cherries 


Are the Gipsies camping in the same place, 
Robert?” 

“Yes, down near the cranberry swamp. 
They may not be there long, though.” 

“Why not ?” asked Dick, always interested in 
these strange, wandering people. 

“Because some of the people living near there 
think the Gipsies have been taking eggs and 
chickens and I saw the chief of police just be¬ 
fore I came home. He was on his way to the 
Gipsy camp to look things over and'warn the 
band that they must move on if there is any 
more trouble.” 

“Then we’d better go there and get Grand¬ 
ma’s pin before that boy goes away,” said Dick. 

“There’s just a chance that he may have 
taken it,” said Mr. Cherry, “but I hardly see 
how he could. However I’ll speak to the chief 
about it. Did you look on the ground outside, 
at the edge of the porch, Mother?” he asked. 

“No, I don’t believe we did,” she answered. 

“Maybe it’s there,” her son suggested. 

“I’ll look!” eagerly offered Janet. 

“And I’ll look under the porch,” proposed 
Dick. “Maybe it went down through a hole.” 


Off to the Gipsy Camp 33 

But neither under the porch, nor on the 
ground outside, was the missing cameo pin 
found, and Janet felt sadder than ever as the 
search was given up. 

“I—I guess it's gone forever,” she sighed. 

“Never mind, my dear,” spoke Grandma 
Cherry kindly, as she put her arms around the 
little girl. “It might have been a great deal 
worse. I'm glad it wasn't my purse with my 
money in, for then I couldn't give my two 
Wild Cherries any more pennies.” 

Mr. and Mrs. Cherry knew the old lady cared 
more for her cameo pin than for a large sum 
of money, but they did not tell the children this. 
Though if Janet and Dick could have seen their 
grandmother looking into nooks and corners 
every time she passed through the dining room, 
or out on the side porch, they might have 
guessed how much the dear old lady missed her 
pin. 

“Do you really think that Gipsy boy might 
have taken it, Robert?” asked his wife as Dick 
and Janet went out to play before supper. 

“Well, it's just possible that he did—yes,” 
was the answer. “I'll have the chief of police 


34 


Two Wild Cherries 


inquire out at the Gipsy camp. Poor mother! 
She certainly will miss that pin! It’s too bad! 
She shouldn’t have let Janet wear it.” 

“I know. But it’s too late to think of that 
now,” said Mrs. Cherry. 

Out in the yard Dick and Janet swung in the 
hammock, and idly knocked about the croquet 
balls, without playing a regular game. Dick 
seemed to be thinking about something serious. 

“What’s the matter?” asked Janet, as she saw 
her brother in this strange and unusual mood. 

Dick glanced back toward the house and then 
looked down the road that led to the cranberry 
swamp or bog. 

“Janet, I’m going down there!” he said, sud¬ 
denly and with a strange manner. 

“Down where?” asked the little girl, wonder¬ 
ing what was going to happen. 

“To the Gipsy camp!” 

“Oh! Oh-o-o-o!” gasped Janet. “To the 
Gipsy—!” and then she clapped her hand over 
her mouth lest her outcry might be heard in the 
house. 

“Yes—I am!” decided Dick. “I’m going to 
that Gipsy camp and make that boy give back 
Grandma’s pin. He has it, I’m sure!” 


Off to the Gipsy Camp 


35 


“Then I’m going with you!” declared Janet. 
“It was my fault, the pin was lost. Fm going 
to help get it back. 

Dick considered this for a moment. 

“All right!” he said at last. “Come on!” 
So the two Wild Cherries started off for the 
Gipsy camp. 


CHAPTER IV 


JANET RUNS AWAY 

“Dick, is it very far to the cranberry 
swamp?” asked Janet of her brother as they 
walked along through the woods. 

“Oh, no, not very far,” he replied. 

“And will we sink in when we get there ?” 

“What do you mean—sink in?” 

“I mean will we sink down in the swamp ?” 

“No—course not!” laughed Dick. “ ’Tisn’t 
’zactly a swamp, though it’s pretty wet when 
it rains. If you’d sink in how could they pick 
the cranberries when they’re ripe?” 

“Maybe they could wear rubber boots, and we 
haven’t got any rubber boots,” said Janet. 
“That’s how, maybe, we could sink in the 
swamp without any boots on.” 

“Oh, I guess we won’t sink in,” said Dick 
cheerfully. “Anyhow the Gipsies are there 
and they don’t sink in.” 

“All right,” murmured Janet. She thought 
36 


Janet Runs Away 


37 


everything Dick did, or said, was about right. 

The two Wild Cherries had told nothing to 
their father, mother or grandmother about go¬ 
ing to the Gipsy camp to look for the hungry 
boy who might have taken the cameo pin. 
Janet and Dick thought if they spoke of their 
trip they would not have been allowed to go. 
Very likely they would not. But now they 
were on their way. 

“I’ve been to the cranberry bog before/’ re¬ 
marked Dick, as they trudged along. 

“Is it lonesome?” Janet wanted to know. 

“Sort of,” admitted Dick. “It would be a 
good place to play wild Indian. Sometimes 
Henry Merton, Sam Ward, Jim Blake and all 
of us fellows play in there. Once Jim slipped 
in and got stuck.” 

“Stuck in what?” Janet wanted to know. 

“Stuck in the mud!” and Dick laughed as he 
remembered it. “He hollered like anything 
when he couldn’t pull his foot out.” 

“Oh!” gasped Janet. “Couldn’t he ever get 
his foot out ?” 

“Of course he did—after a while!” chuckled 
Dick. “But we had to help him and he was all 
black mud.” 


38 


Two Wild Cherries 


“I—I don’t want to get stuck in the black 
mud,” murmured the little girl. “Maybe we 
hadn’t better go, Dick,” and she turned back. 

“Oh, you won’t get stuck now!” laughed her 
brother. “It was wet and rainy the day we 
fellows went to the bog. It’s dry weather now. 
Come on, Jan!” 

So Janet followed her brother. 

To go to the cranberry bog where, in the fall, 
many bushels of the dark red berries could be 
gathered, the children had to pass through a 
clump of woods, and across a meadow. Then 
they went up a hill, beyond some farms and 
down into the bog. 

It was a pleasant day, late in June, a day 
when the sunshine lingered longest on the hills 
and in the valleys. School had closed the week 
before, and ahead of the two Wild Cherries was 
the big vacation. They meant to have all the 
fun they could. 

They had felt a little sad at the loss of 
Grandma Cherry’s cameo pin, but their hearts 
were much lighter now that they were on the 
hunt for it. 

They were almost out of the woods, going 
through a rather dark place, and the meadow 


Janet Runs Away 


39 


showed green in front of them when, suddenly, 
there was a rustling in the bushes near Janet. 
She gave a jump back on the path and cried: 

“What was that?” 

“Oh—maybe a fox,” answered Dick, calmly. 

“A fox!” cried Janet. “Oh, I didn’t know 
there was a fox in the woods or I wouldn’t 
have come!” 

“Pooh! A fox won’t hurt you!” laughed 
Dick. “A fox is more scared than you are. 
He ran away as soon as he heard you!” 

“Are you sure ?” asked his sister. 

“Course I am! Jim Blake and I saw a fox 
once when we went through these woods. It 
was like a little reddish-brown dog, ’ceptin’ it 
had a big tail like a dusting brush.” 

“Did it try to bite you?” 

“Nope! It just ran away. We ran after 
it but we couldn’t get near it.” 

“Fd like to see a fox—running away,” re¬ 
marked Janet. She peered about in the bushes, 
but there was no further rustling sound, nor 
did she catch a glimpse of any creature with a 
dusting brush for a tail. Then she took cour¬ 
age and walked on beside her brother. 

The two Wild Cherries walked up the hill in 


40 


Two Wild Cherries 


the pleasant sunshine. Then they walked down 
the hill, and Dick led the way through another 
small clump of trees. 

Suddenly he came to a stop and motioned 
back with his hand for Janet to halt and keep 
quiet. 

“What is it? What's the matter?" she 
asked in a whisper. “Do you see the fox?" 

“No, but I can see the Gipsy camp," answered 
Dick, also in a whisper. 

“Where?" breathed Janet, her lips close to 
her brother's ear. 

“Right ahead—through the bushes!" 

Janet parted the leaves and saw two or three 
dirty-brown tents. As the children looked they 
heard dogs barking. And then they caught the 
murmur of voices. 

“Those are the Gipsies—the fortune-tellers," 
whispered Dick. 

“I can't see any fortune-teller," objected 
Janet. “Is this all the closer we're going?" she 
asked in disappointed tones. 

“No, I'm going up close," said Dick. “But 
I wanted to look first. I'm going up and tell 
that boy he's got to give back Grandma's cameo 

_ • t) 

pin. 


Janet Runs Away 


4i 


It seemed easy, when he said it—just like 
that. Janet hadn’t a doubt but that the Gipsy 
lad would hand the pin back at once when Dick 
asked for it, and say he was sorry for having 
taken it. Then all her sad trouble would end. 

“Come on,” whispered Dick to his sister, 
“but don’t make any noise! We want to take 
’em by s’prise; like when we play Indians you 
know.” 

Janet knew about Indian surprises. She had 
taken part in many of them—make believe, of 
course. 

“If we s’prise ’em, and go right up to ’em be¬ 
fore they know we’re here,” Dick went on in a 
whisper, “and if we ask ’em quick for the pin, 
they won’t have any chance to hide it.” 

“Yes,” agreed Janet. 

Softly the children made their way to the 
edge of the cranberry bog. As Dick had said, 
it was quite dry now, though at times there 
must have been water in places and also swampy 
patches here and there. But the Gipsies had 
pitched their tents on raised and dry mounds 
which were scattered rather plentifully over 
the bog. 

Dick and Janet could make out the tents quite 


42 


Two Wild Cherrie: 


plainly now. The flaps were fastened back, 
and inside the canvas houses could be seen 
tables, chairs and even beds, with red covers 
on them. 

‘There’s a fortune-teller,” whispered Dick, 
pointing to one tent that stood off by itself, 
away from the others. In front of it flapped 
a gaily painted banner. It was a picture of a 
large hand, with many criss-cross lines on the 
palm. Above the hand was printed the words 
MADAME DEBORAH and below the hand 
was this notice: SHE TELLS THE PAST, 
PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

“I—I’d be afraid to have my fortune told 
by her,” whispered Janet, as a dark-faced 
woman, wearing a bright yellow dress, trimmed 
with red and ornamented with jingling spangles 
walked out of this tent. 

“You don’t need to be afraid,” whispered 
back Dick. “Gipsies like to tell your fortune 
’cause they get money that way. But it’s silly, 
mother says. She says nobody can tell what’s 
going to happen to you—it’s just silly to have 
fortunes told.” 

“I guess it is,” agreed Janet. “Anyhow I’m 
not going to. Oh, Dick! look!” she exclaimed 


Janet Runs Away 43 

in a louder voice than she had yet used. 
“What are the wagons for?” 

“Don’t make so much noise!” cautioned her 
brother. “Oh, those wagons,” he went on, as 
he saw at what his sister was pointing. “The 
Gipsies travel in them. They hitch horses to 
’em and go all around the country. Gipsies 
never stay long in one place, daddy said. 
They’re wanderers, whatever that is.” 

“I guess it’s something queer,” remarked 
Janet. “But the wagons are pretty.” 

They were gay, at all events—red and yellow 
painted wagons, with pieces of glistening look¬ 
ing glass set in the sides and ends here and 
there, so that they sparkled in the sun. Teth¬ 
ered near the bright red and yellow wagons 
were a number of horses, and wandering in 
and out among the legs of the horses were sev¬ 
eral rough looking dogs. 

“Are those the wagons Gipsies carry off chil¬ 
dren in?” asked Janet. 

“Pooh! Gipsies don’t take children away!” 
declared Dick. 

“Oh, they do so—Lulu Wilson told me!” 
declared Janet. 

“Well, maybe they used to, but they don’t 


44 


Two Wild Cherries 


any more,” said Dick. “I asked daddy and 
he said they didn’t. If the Gipsies took away 
children the police wouldn’t let ’em come to 
camp in the cranberry bog, and they come here 
every year.” 

Janet knew this was so, for as long as she 
could remember she had heard of the Gipsy 
camp not far from their house. No great 
harm had ever been done by the dark-skinned 
wanderers as far as the children remembered. 

For a few moments Dick and Janet remained 
hidden at the edge of the clump of trees, on the 
edge of the Gipsy camp. They could see some 
of the dark-featured men and women moving 
about, and at one place was a blazing fire, over 
which hung a steaming kettle. 

“That’s where they cook their soup,” ex¬ 
plained Dick. “Now,” he went on, “I’m going 
down there and tell ’em we want Grandma’s 
cameo pin back.” 

“But I don’t see that boy,” spoke Janet. 

“He’s in one of the tents or one of the 
wagons, I guess,” said her brother. “Come on, 
Jan!” 

“I—I’m now—sorter scared,” she objected. 

“Pooh! There’s nothing to be scared of!” 


Janet Runs Away 


45 


declared Dick. “You wait here a minute and 
I’ll go a little closer to see if it’s all right. 
Then I’ll come back and get you.” 

Janet breathed a sigh of relief. Dick walked 
forward a little way, and looked over the camp. 
It seemed peaceful enough, with Gipsy men 
sprawled in front of the tents, or sitting in the 
wagons smoking their pipes. Dick saw 
some boys and girls; and one lad, he felt sure, 
was the one who had taken the pin. 

Dick swung around to go back to his sister, 
but, just as he caught sight of her, where she 
was waiting near a sassafras bush, he saw Janet 
turn and start to run away. At the same time 
there was a movement in the bushes as if some 
animal were gliding toward the little girl. 

“Hi, Janet! Wait a minute! Where you 
going?” called Dick, no longer trying to 
keep silent as he saw her speeding on. 

Janet continued to run away. But she 
turned once, showing her frightened face to her 
brother, and cried: 

“Oh, Dick! It's after me! IBs after me! 
Oh! Oh!” 


CHAPTER V 


A BARREL OF FUN 

Dick Cherry, at first, did not know what it 
was all about. He saw his sister running 
away, and heard her call that something was 
after her, but what it was he couldn’t tell. 

He gave up all idea, now, of keeping quiet so 
that the Gipsies wouldn’t know he was near 
their camp, and, raising his voice to a shout, 
he cried: 

“Janet! Janet! Wait! What is it? 
What’s after you?” 

Back came the little girl’s voice in answer: 

“I don’t know what it is, but it’s chasing me! 
Maybe it’s the fox! Come and help me, Dick!” 

“I’m coming!” shouted the little boy. He 
gave one look back over his shoulder to see if 
any of the Gipsies might be pursuing, but all 
seemed quiet in the camp. 

As a matter of fact the Gipsies had often 
been spied upon from the woods or bushes by 
46 


A Barrel of Fun 


47 


children from the village, and the dark-skinned 
travelers did not mind it. The children seldom 
annoyed them, and the campers paid little atten¬ 
tion to the girls and boys. Nor did the Gipsy 
girls and boys play with the village children. 

So when the Gipsies heard the shouts of Janet 
and Dick they gave no heed. They had often 
heard the village lads and lassies shouting in 
the woods, or about the cranberry bog, and it 
meant nothing. As the wanderers were get¬ 
ting their supper ready, perhaps they did not 
even hear Janet's wild screams nor Dick’s calls. 

On after his sister sped the Cherry lad. He 
wanted to help, though he could not imagine 
a fox chasing Janet. A fox would never do 
that unless perhaps the little foxes were in 
danger. 

“Maybe it’s one of the Gipsy dogs,” thought 
Dick. “But if it was a dog it would bark.” 
So he ran on, calling: “I’m coming, Janet! 
I’m coming! Don’t be scared!” 

Janet ran very fast—much more swiftly than 
Dick had thought his sister could run. Now 
and then she looked back, and once she pointed 
to the bushes beside the path. Dick saw the 
underbrush moving as though a dog, fox or 


48 Two Wild Cherries 

some animal was keeping along beside Janet. 

“What is it? What's chasing you?" de¬ 
manded Dick as at last he caught up to Janet. 
“Show me!" 

“I—I don't 'zactly know what it is," Janet 
panted as she leaned against Dick, for she was 
tired and out of breath. “But it was some¬ 
thing that wiggled in the bushes. Oh, maybe 
it was a snake!" 

“Snakes don't chase you!" declared the boy. 
“They're as scared as a fox. And it isn't a fox, 
or I’d see him. I don't see, Janet, what it could 
be, unless maybe—" 

Just then there was a violent movement in 
the bushes near the two children and Janet 
screamed. 

Next Dick caught sight of something large 
and round, like a big ball, covered with feathers, 
strutting from the underbrush. At the same 
time there sounded a loud: 

“Gobble-obble-obble! Gobble-obble-obble!" 

“Oh!" gasped Janet. 

“Ho! Ho!" laughed Dick. Then as he 
heard the sound again, and had a full view of 
the round, feathered creature, he added: “It's 


A Barrel of Fun 


49 

a big turkey gobbler—that’s all—a big turkey 
gobbler!” 

And so it was. The fowl, with his strong 
wings dragging on the ground, and the curious 
red tassel dangling over his beak, seemed to be 
very angry as he strutted through the bushes. 

“Oh, will he bite me?” cried Janet. 

‘Til drive him away,” offered Dick. And 
with a stick he caught up he made such a brave 
showing, shouting and threatening the Thanks¬ 
giving fowl, that the gobbler was glad enough 
to turn tail and strut back into the underbrush. 

“Was he a Gipsy turkey?” asked Janet, when 
her heart had stopped beating so fast. 

“No, I don’t guess they have any turkeys,” 
answered Dick. “Mr. Baker—he keeps tur¬ 
keys and chickens, and maybe it was one of his. 
I guess it got loose and walked around in the 
woods. Maybe it thought you would take it 
home, Janet.” 

“I wouldn’t do it!” exclaimed the little girl. 
“He chased me, that’s what he did, and I ran.” 

“You ran fast, too!” chuckled Dick. “I 
could hardly catch up to you.” 

“I was terrible scared!” went on Janet. 


50 


Two Wild Cherries 


“Well, you're all right now," went on Dick. 
“We can go back and ask the Gipsies to give us 
grandma’s cameo pin." 

“Maybe we hadn’t better go back to the 
Gipsy camp, Dick," said Janet, tying her hair 
ribbon which had caught on a branch. 

“Why not?’’ 

“ ’Cause they must have heard us hollering 
and they’ll know we’re here and you can’t sneak 
up on ’em like you wanted to." 

“Yes, that’s so," admitted the little boy, “but 
I’d like to get back that pin for grandma 
and—’’ 

He paused and seemed to be listening. 
Janet, too, heard a noise in the bushes behind 
them. 

“Oh, maybe that gobbler’s coming back!” she 
whispered. 

“If he is!" exclaimed Dick, catching up a 
heavier club, “I’ll—’’ 

But, a moment later a voice called: 

“Well, where have you children been?" 

And then out on the path stepped Daddy 
Cherry. 

“Oh!" exclaimed Janet in relief. 


A Barrel of Fun 


5i 

“Oh!” murmured Dick in surprise. “How’d 
you find us ?” he went on. 

“Easy enough!” laughed his father. 
“Grandma saw you two starting off around the 
corner of the house, and I guessed that you'd 
head for the Gipsy camp. You shouldn't have 
done that without asking.^ 

“No, sir. I—I won’t do it again,” promised 
Dick. 

“Did you really go to the camp?” his father 
wanted to know. “Did you ask about the 
cameo pin?” 

“No, we didn’t have a chance,” was the an¬ 
swer. “A turkey gobbler chased Janet and—” 

“I’m glad of it!” said Mr. Cherry. “I mean 
I’m glad you didn’t say anything to the Gipsies 
about the cameo. That is for the police to do 
—not you two children. Besides, the Gipsies 
may know nothing about it, and it would be 
wrong to say that they had taken the pin if 
they hadn’t.” 

“I—I didn’t,” said Dick. “I was going to, 
but—” 

“Well, it’s just as well you didn’t,” spoke his 
father. “I caught you just in time. Now you 


52 


Two Wild Cherries 


had better come back home to supper with me. 
You’ve done enough for one day. Wild Cher¬ 
ries is a good name for you.” 

But the children’s father smiled, so Janet and 
Dick knew he could not be angry with them. 

“Don’t fuss so about my lost pin, my dears,” 
begged Grandma Cherry, when the children 
reached home and their story had been told. 
“I should very much like to get it back, of 
course, and it may be somewhere around the 
house. But don’t search for it any more.” 

“I do wish I could find it, though,” murmured 
Janet. 

“I’m sure that Gipsy boy has it,” said Dick. 
The long and somewhat exciting day came to an 
end at last. When the two Wild Cherries were 
safe in bed, their father went down town 
and spoke to the police about the chance that 
the missing cameo pin might be in the Gipsy 
camp. 

“I’ll go out there myself and look around,” 
promised Chief of Police Gannon. 

Dick and Janet were up early next morning, 
ready for a day of fun. In fact they always 
got up early during the vacation days, but it 


A Barrel of Fun 53 

was not so easy to rouse them on days when 
they had to go to school. 

"Come on, Jan!” called Dick, after breakfast. 

"Where you going?” she wanted to know. 
"Going to play Indian again ?” 

"Nope!” 

"Going to the Gipsy camp?” 

"Nope!” 

"Then what you going to do?” 

"Have some fun. Come on, I’ll show you.” 

Dick led the way out to the barn, which was 
also a garage now. In one part there was a 
mow of hay, for once in a while Mr. Cherry 
stabled in the barn an old horse that was used 
to haul boxes of hardware from the railroad 
station to the store. Usually the horse was 
kept in a stable near the store. But sometimes, 
when the animal was used to plow up a garden 
place near the Cherry home, it was kept in the 
old barn. So there was always some hay to 
feed the horse. 

"We’ll slide down the hay mow,” announced 
Dick to his sister. 

"That’ll be fun!” she agreed, and they played 
at this game for some time. 


54 


Two Wild Cherries 


Then, after Dick had taken a long slide, from 
the very top of the mow, and had slid half way 
across the barn floor on some hay that was scat¬ 
tered there, the little boy cried: 

“Oh, I know how we can have a barrel of 
fun!” 

“How?” asked Janet. 

“In that barrel,” and Dick pointed to one 
standing in a corner of the barn. “Til lay it 
down on the barn floor, with the open end to¬ 
ward us,” he went on, “and we can slide down 
the hay mow and slide right into the barrel!” 

“Oh, that’ll be dandy!” cried Janet. 

Dick, with his sister’s help, rolled the empty 
barrel over the barn floor, and laid it on the 
side, with the opening at the end of the place 
where he had ended his last slide. 

“We can shoot right into the barrel,” he said. 
“I’ll try it first.” 

Down on the smooth, slippery hay slid Dick. 
And, somewhat to his own surprise, he shot, 
feet first, into the barrel. He had made sure 
there were no sharp nails sticking out to tear 
his clothes. 

“Oh, you went right in!” cried Janet in 
delight. 


A Barrel of Fun 55 

“Sure I did!” laughed Dick. “I told you it 
would be a barrel of fun!” 

“Now it's my turn!” the little girl said. 

“All right/’ agreed Dick. 

Janet climbed up to the top of the hay mow. 
She sat down and hitched herself along until 
she began to slide swiftly down the sloping part, 
which was like a hill. 

Faster and faster she slid, until she reached 
the barn floor, over which, to make it smooth 
and slippery, Dick had scattered loose hay. 
Straight in front of Janet was the open barrel, 
and into this she slid, feet first. 

“Good! Good!” cried Dick. “Isn’t that a 
barrel of fun?” 

But a surprising thing happened. Once in¬ 
side the barrel, Janet kept on sliding, or, rather, 
rolling. Over and over rolled the barrel, with 
the little girl inside. Right out of the open 
barn door it rolled, and then it began to go 
over and over, down a hill just outside the 
barn. 

Rolling along went the barrel with Janet in¬ 
side it. 

“Stop! Stop!” cried Dick as if that would 
do any good. 


56 


Two Wild Cherries 


“Oh, get me out! Get me out!” begged Janet 
inside the rolling barrel. 

But on and on she went down the hill, rolling 
faster and faster—bumping along. 


CHAPTER VI 

A WOODLAND PICNIC 

Dick Cherry was very much frightened at 
what had happened to his sister. He was older 
than Janet and if she were hurt now his mother 
would be sure to say it was his fault. And it 
would be, Dick thought, for he had brought 
Janet out to the barn to slide into the barrel. 

Out ran Dick as fast as he could go, hoping 
he might catch and stop the barrel before it 
rolled all the way down the hill. But he soon 
saw that he could never do this, for the barrel, 
with Janet inside, was rolling much faster than 
he could run. Then Dick began to call: 

“Oh, Janet! Janet! Get out of the barrel! 
Roll out!” 

Even if Janet could have heard this she could 
not have done as Dick told her. In the first 
place she was stuck rather tightly inside the 
barrel, which was partly filled with hay from 
the barn floor. 


67 


58 


Two Wild Cherries 


In the second place Janet couldn't hear what 
Dick shouted at her, for the barrel made such a 
rumbling sound in her ears that this sound was 
louder than everything else. Then, too, it 
would have been dangerous for Janet to have 
tried to scramble out of the moving cask. So 
all she could do was to remain inside. And she 
began to feel dizzy from turning over and over 
so often. 

“Oh, dear!" thought poor Janet, who had 
stopped screaming for help. “This isn't any 
barrel of fun at all!" 

But though Dick saw he could not catch up 
to the barrel, he did not stop running. Down 
the hill he raced after it. Then he saw Jerry, 
the hired man who made himself useful about 
Mr. Cherry's place. 

“Jerry! Jerry!" shouted Dick to the man 
who had a rake. “Stop the barrel!" 

“Why should I stop the barrel ?" Jerry 
wanted to know. “Let it roll for it isn't doing 
any harm. Let it roll!" 

“But Janet—she—she's inside the barrel!" 
gasped Dick. 

“Whew! Oh, Great Peter!" cried Jerry. 
“Janet in that barrel? Well, you sure are 


A Woodland Picnic 59 

rightly called two Wild Cherries! What in the 
world—” 

But Jerry decided he had no time to ask ques¬ 
tions. Those could come later. The barrel 
was coming toward him, but twisting off to one 
side. 

‘Til reach it with the rake!” exclaimed the 
hired man. 

He thrust out the long-handled garden tool, 
hoping he might catch the sharp teeth on one 
of the barrel hoops. But Jerry missed it by a 
few inches, and the barrel rolled on. 

However it was now at the bottom of the hill 
leading down from the barn, and was not roll¬ 
ing so fast. Seeing this, the hired man started 
after it, followed by Dick. 

“We got to get Janet out! We got to get 
Janet out!” gasped Dick. 

But Janet got herself out of the barrel, or, 
rather, she was helped out in a strange way. 
The barrel was not rolling so fast as at first, 
now that it was on the level and off the hill. 
But it was still moving along, faster than Jerry 
or Dick could run. 

Suddenly the wooden cask struck a fence 
post. There was a crashing, booming sound, 


6o 


Two Wild Cherries 


and, a moment later the barrel fell apart, the 
staves breaking loose from the hoops. And 
then, in the midst of the pieces of wood, 
Janet sat up, wisps of hay clinging to her 
so that she looked like some Mermaid coming 
up from the bottom of the sea covered 
with weeds. 

“Oh! Oh, Janet!” exclaimed Dick as he ran 
up to her, and helped her to get out of the 
tangle of hoops and staves. “Are you hurt?” 

“It’s a wonder if she isn't!” murmured 
Jerry. “I never saw such tricks in all my 
life—never; Wild cherries—whew! Great 
Peter!” 

Janet looked about her. She was still a bit 
dizzy from the queer ride, and there was a 
scratch on one hand. But she gave herself a 
little shake, to rid herself of the hay, as a dog 
shakes himself when he comes from the water. 
Then Janet said: 

“I don't guess so! I don't guess I’m hurt 
any!” 

“That’s good,” and Dick breathed a sigh of 
relief. 

“But I'm not going to do it again!” Janet 
was quick to say. 


A Woodland Picnic 6i 

“I should hope not!” chuckled Jerry. 
“What did you do it for, anyhow?” 

“It was an—now an—accident!” explained 
Dick. 

“Well, it’s lucky it was no worse,” went on 
the hired man. “It was a narrow escape.” 

“It was an old barrel, anyhow,” went on 
Dick. “Dad won’t care ’cause it’s busted.” 

“Oh, it wasn’t the barrel I was thinking of— 
it was your sister,” Jerry said. 

“I’ll help you pick up the pieces,” offered 
Dick. “Maybe you can put the barrel together 
again, Jerry.” 

“No, I don’t believe I’d better. Next time 
you both might get in it and roll down hill. 
That barrel will make good fire wood. But 
here comes your mother and I guess she thinks 
something happened.” 

Mrs. Cherry, having heard unusual sounds 
out near the barn, had begun to fear the chil¬ 
dren were up to some mischief, so she came out 
to see about it. 

“Are either of you hurt?” she asked, when 
she saw the broken barrel. 

“No’m,” answered Dick. 

“But I had a—now a narrow fire escape— 


62 Two Wild Cherries 

Jerry said so,” remarked Janet, somewhat 
proudly. 

“I didn’t say fire escape,” chuckled the hired 
man. “I said it was a narrow escape. She 
rolled out of the barn and down the hill in a bar¬ 
rel of hay, Mrs. Cherry,” he explained. 

“Oh, children!” cried their mother. “Why 
do you do such things to make me worry?” 

“We didn’t mean to worry you, Mother,” 
said Dick. “And, anyhow, it was an accident,” 
and he told of the slide and how Janet had gone 
into the barrel so hard that she caused it to roll 
out of the barn. 

“Well, don’t do it again,” warned Mrs. 
Cherry. “Never do it again!” 

“No’m, we won’t,” promised Dick. 

The Wild Cherries left Jerry picking up 
pieces of the barrel, and walked back toward 
the house with their mother. 

But the day was still young. There was 
plenty that might happen before the sun went 
down. And when the excitement of the barrel¬ 
rolling was over the two children began looking 
about for something else to do. 

“I know what would be lots of fun,” sug¬ 
gested Janet, when she had put one of her dolls 


A Woodland Picnic 63 

to sleep on the side porch, and while Dick was 
playing with his jumping Jack. 

“What?” asked her brother. 

“Let’s have a picnic,” went on his sister. 

“Where?” 

“Over in the woods. We can take some¬ 
thing to eat in a basket and have lunch under 
the trees. Mother’ll let us—I guess.” 

Janet said the last as if a bit in doubt. Per¬ 
haps their mother would think they had done 
enough for one day, and make them stay home. 

“We’ll ask her,” suggested Dick. 

The two children often went to the near-by 
woods for little picnic parties, sometimes taking 
their chums with them. The woods were a 
safe place for them to play, Mrs. Cherry knew. 
So now, when they asked if they might go there 
and take a basket of lunch with them, their 
mother said they might. 

“I’ll put up the lunch!” offered Janet. 

“I’ll eat it!” proposed Dick with a laugh. 

“You had better let Jane help you pack the 
basket,” suggested Grandma Cherry with a 
smile. 

And after Janet had cut one slice of bread so 
thick that not even Dick could have bitten 


6 4 


Two Wild Cherries 


through it, and when she cut the next slice so 
thin that it fell apart, the little girl sighed, 
handed the knife to Jane and said: 

“You do it, please/' 

Pretty soon, carrying their basket of lunch, 
the children set off for the woods on their pic¬ 
nic. It was getting along toward noon, and 
they would not come home to dinner, they de¬ 
cided, for they had taken plenty with them. 

“But be sure to come back before dark,” their 
mother warned them. 

“Oh, we will,” they promised. 

But they did not know what was to happen 
to them in the woods. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE MISSING BASKET 

Around the duck pond, across the sparkling, 
singing brook, over a green meadow and into 
the cool, shadowy woods walked the two Wild 
Cherries. They were not so very wild now, for 
they had been through enough excitement with 
the rolling barrel, so that, for a time, they were 
somewhat quiet. 

“It’s nice in here; isn’t it, Dick?” asked Janet 
as she told him to set down the lunch basket, so 
she could “change hands,” as her left one was 
tired from grasping the handle. 

“Yes, we can have a lot of fun here,” he said. 
“We’ll play we’re pirates off a ship and we came 
here to hide the gold.” 

“All right!” agreed Janet, always ready for 
one of these pretend games. “But maybe we 
oughtn’t to have such a good time, Dick.” 

“Why shouldn’t we have a good time?” he 
asked in surprise as they walked on again. 

65 


66 


Two Wild Cherries 


“I mean we didn't ought to be so glad and 
happy like." 

“Why not?" and Dick was plainly puzzled. 

“ 'Cause I lost Grandma's cameo pin and she 
feels sad about it and maybe I ought to feel 
sad, too, but I don't—I like it here," and Janet 
looked about her with the beautiful woods on 
every side. 

“Well, it's too bad about Grandma's pin," 
agreed the boy, “but you couldn't help it, and 
maybe we can find it." 

“Where?" asked Janet, with a gleam of hope 
in her eyes. 

“It’s in that Gipsy camp—that's where 
Grandma’s cameo pin is!" declared Dick with 
a serious shake of his head. “If they'd let me 
go after that Gipsy boy I’d get that pin back, 
sure!" 

“Oh, could you?" and Janet gave a little wig¬ 
gle of satisfaction in feeling how brave and 
strong Dick could be if they would only let 
him. 

“Course I could!" he declared. “I’d make 
him give back that pin! He's got it—I know 
he has. Maybe he didn’t really mean to steal 


The Missing Basket 67 

it, but he picked it up and maybe he’d give it 
back if I asked him.” 

“S’posin’ he wouldn’t?” asked Janet, anx¬ 
ious to know what might happen. 

“Then I’d—I’d fight him!” Dick looked 
very brave and bold. 

“Oh! Oh!” gasped Janet. “Would you—- 
really?” 

“Sure I would!” and Dick doubled up the 
hand that was not clasped around the basket 
handle. 

“Not now—would you?” his sister wanted to 
know. 

“No—not now,” Dick agreed. “We’re go¬ 
ing to have a picnic now. And, anyway, I 
promised daddy I wouldn’t go to the Gipsy 
camp to look for Grandma’s pin unless he was 
with me.” 

“Oh—all right.” Janet breathed easier now. 
She was a little afraid of the Gipsies, though 
daddy and mother had said they were harmless 
folk. 

The children walked on farther into the 
woods where the sunshine was slanting like 
bars of yellow gold through the green leaves. 


68 


Two Wild Cherries 


“Where we going to eat?” asked Janet, after 
a while. 

“Over by that big stump near the spring,” de¬ 
cided Dick. It was a favorite picnic spot for 
him, his sister and their boy and girl chums. 
The flat stump served for a table, and the bub¬ 
bling spring, near by, gave them plenty of 
clear, cold water to drink. 

Dick and Janet made their way to this little 
glade—a clearing in the midst of big trees— 
and the basket was set on the stump-table. 
Then Dick gave a whoop and turned three som¬ 
ersaults, one after the other in the soft, dried 
leaves on the ground. 

“What makes you do that ?” asked Janet with 
a laugh. 

“Oh, I just feel so good!” cried Dick, and he 
gave another whoop. 

“Are you playing Indian?” his sister wanted 
to know. 

“No, we’re going to play pirate,” Dick an¬ 
swered. “I guess pirates don’t whoop like In¬ 
dians, though.” 

“What do they do?” Janet asked. 

Dick thought for a moment, trying to re- 


The Missing Basket 69 

member some sea stories his mother had read 
to him. 

“I guess they say ‘shiver my timbers/ or ‘be¬ 
lay the main mast/ or something like that!” an¬ 
swered Dick with a laugh. 

“Lady pirates don’t have to say those things; 
do they?” asked Janet. 

“Lady pirates!” cried Dick. “Who ever 
heard of a lady pirate ?” 

“Well, aren’t I one?” and Janet looked rather 
disappointed. 

“Oh,” and Dick smiled. “That’s so, you’re 
going to pretend to be a pirate, too. But 
you’ll have to make believe be a man pirate— 
there aren’t any lady ones, I guess.” 

“All right,” agreed the little girl. 

Dick gave another whoop and turned three 
more somersaults. 

“I feel so good!” he explained to Janet’s won¬ 
dering look, though she, herself, was feeling 
happy for she was dancing about the stump on 
which set the basket of lunch. 

“Dick,” she said, getting more serious, “do 
you s’pose it’s all right—being so glad and 
happy like, when I lost Grandma’s cameo ?” 


70 


Two Wild Cherries 


“Oh—sure it is!” he declared. “You 
couldn’t help it. And maybe we’ll get it back. 
Come on now, we’ll look for a pirate cave and 
after a while we’ll eat.” 

Off through the woods ran the children, 
laughing and shouting in delight. 

“Do you think you can find a pirate cave?” 
asked Janet. 

“Yes,” her brother replied. “Last week Sam 
Ward and Jim Blake and I came to these woods 
and we found a little cave in the side of the 
hill. Course it isn’t very big, but we could pre¬ 
tend some little pirates lived there.” 

“It’ll be lots of fun,” agreed Janet. 

After some search, Dick found the cave he 
was looking for. It was just a hole under a 
place where a big tree grew on the side of the 
hill. Some animal—perhaps a fox—had 
started to dig under the tree roots, and the rain, 
in time, had washed out quite an opening. 

“Oh, are you going in there?” asked Janet, 
as she looked into the dark hole. 

“Sure!” answered Dick. “This is the pirate 
cave and we’ll make believe dig for gold here. 
Come on in!” 

He squeezed his way beneath the tangled tree 


The Missing Basket 


7i 


roots, and was almost out of sight in the “cave,” 
when suddenly Janet, who waited outside, heard 
her brother cry: 

“Oh, I'm caught! Something has me by the 
foot. Oh, Janet! I’m caught fast!” 

“Maybe it's a pirate!” exclaimed Janet. 
And then, as she happened to think there were 
no such men as pirates in those woods she 
added: “Maybe it’s one of the Gipsies!” 

Dick was twisting and turning, trying to get 
back and up out of the hole. But something 
seemed to be holding him fast by one foot down 
in the bottom of the little cave. 

“Oh, Dick! What shall I do?” screamed 
Janet. “Shall I run back and get Jerry or 
mother?” 

“No—don't go away!” gasped her brother. 
“I guess—maybe—” 

Janet could see him pulling with all his might 
to get his foot loose, and finally he succeeded. 
Up out of the cave he scrambled. 

“Whew!” he cried. “I was scared!” 

“What was it?” asked Janet. “Did a bear 
have you by the leg?” 

“No,” answered Dick. “It wasn't a bear.” 

“Was it a fox?” 


72 


Two Wild Cherries 


“Nothing like that/’ laughed the boy. “My 
foot was just caught under a twisted root down 
in the hole. I didn’t know what it was until I 
put my hand down and felt the tree root. But 
I pulled loose from it all right.” 

“I’m glad you did,” said Janet. 

“Next time I’ll go down easy and then I 
won’t get caught,” said Dick. 

“Oh, are you going in that hole again?” his 
sister asked. 

“Sure I’m going in the pirate cave!” declared 
Dick. “How we going to play if I don’t ?” 

“Well, I’m not going to play if you go in 
there!” declared Janet. “Maybe you’ll be 
caught again, and maybe I’ll get caught, and 
we can’t ever, ever get out and—and—” 

“We can’t get caught any more,” insisted 
Dick, “ ’cause I broke that root off when I 
pulled my foot out. Come on, let’s go in and 
play pirate!” 

“No!” and Janet shook her head. “Let’s 
look for a bigger cave, where there aren’t any 
tree roots.” 

“Oh, all right,” agreed Dick, after thinking 
it over for a few seconds. 

“Or, if you don’t want to do that, we can go 


The Missing Basket 


73 

eat,” suggested his sister. “I guess it's 'most 
time to eat. I’m hungry, anyhow.” 

“So’m I,” assented Dick. “We can eat and 
then look for another pirate cave.” 

Back toward the little glade where they had 
left their lunch basket went the two Wild Cher¬ 
ries. They were soon over their little fright 
caused by Dick being caught in the hole, and 
were laughing gaily as they drew near the big, 
flat stump. 

But, as they reached it, their laughter sud¬ 
denly ended and they looked at one another with 
wondering eyes. For there was no basket of 
lunch on the stump. It was gone—not even so 
much as a crumb remained! 

“Oh—Oh, Dick!” gasped Janet. “Look— 
it’s gone!” 

“Yes—yes, I guess it is,” admitted her 
brother. “Our lunch is gone!” 


CHAPTER VIII 


AN INDIAN TRAIL 

For a few moments, neither Dick nor Janet 
knew what to do. It was all so strange. They 
had come to the woods and left their basket of 
lunch on the flat stump-table. Then Dick had 
gotten his foot caught in the tree stump, and 
they had come back to see the woodland table 
vacant—the basket gone. And they felt sure 
no one else was in this part of the forest except 
themselves. If any of their boy or girl chums 
had come to the glade their voices would have 
been heard. 

“Well, it’s gone,” said Dick again, having 
walked around the stump several times, to make 
sure that the basket had not fallen off. 

“Maybe this isn’t the right stump, Dick,” 
suggested Janet. 

“What do you mean—not the right stump?” 

“I mean maybe we left the basket somewhere 
else. There are a lot of stumps like this in the 
woods.” 


74 


An Indian Trail 


75 


“Yes,” agreed Dick, looking about him, “but 
this is the stump all right. I’ve been here lots 
of times before and I know it. Anyhow, look 
at this old cracker box. Don’t you remember 
seeing it when we first got here ?” 

“Yes,” admitted Janet, “I remember it—you 
kicked it.” 

“Sure I did,” said Dick. For there had been 
an empty carton, that had once held crackers, 
lying at the foot of the stump when the two 
Wild Cherries first reached it, and Dick, as any 
boy would do, had kicked at the box, knocking 
it a little way down the path. The box was 
still where he had sent it flying, and this made 
it certain that the children were at the right 
stump. 

“But where is the basket?” asked Janet. 
“Oh, maybe a bear came and got it,” she went 
on. “Bears get very hungry, Dick.” She 
looked around and glanced over her shoulder as 
if, any moment, a bear might come stalking 
out of the bushes. 

“There aren’t any bears here,” declared Dick. 
“I’ve been in these woods lots of times, and 
there aren’t any bears.” 

“I’m glad of it,” sighed Janet. “But some- 


Two Wild Cherries 


76 

thing took our lunch. It couldn’t go away by 
itself; could it, Dick?” 

“Course not.” 

“And birds couldn’t carry the basket and all,” 
went on Janet. “If the cover was off birds 
could pick off pieces of the bread and cake and 
cookies, but they couldn’t take the whole 
basket.” 

“No,” admitted Dick, “they couldn’t.” 

“Unless maybe it was an eagle,” Janet pro¬ 
ceeded. “Are there any eagles in these woods, 
Dick?” She looked up at the sky as if she 
might see one of the big birds. 

“No, I never saw any eagles,” the little boy 
replied. “But Henry Merton and I saw a 
hawk, once. It was after chickens.” 

“Oh, then it was a hawk that took our 
basket!” cried Janet. “’Cause there’s some 
chicken sandwiches in our lunch. Jane put ’em 
in.” 

“Hawks don’t want chicken sandwiches ” de¬ 
clared Dick. “They only take live chickens.” 

“But something took our nice lunch!” and 
Janet seemed ready to cry. “I’m hungry, too,” 
she added with a sigh. 

“Yes, somebody took it,” assented Dick, “and 


An Indian Trail 


77 


I think I know who it was.” He had been 
walking slowly around the stump, his eyes bent 
on the ground in a manner he had once seen 
in a picture which was called “an Indian on a 
trail.” 

“Who was it?” asked Janet. 

“The Gipsies!” cried Dick. “Look!” 

He held it up so Janet could see a round, 
glittering piece of metal. At first Janet 
thought it was a gold dollar, but when she 
looked more closely at it as Dick held it out 
on the palm of his hand, she saw that it was 
one of the spangles, or jingling brass coins, that 
the Gipsy women wore on their gay red and 
yellow dresses. 

“Oh, the Gipsies have been here; haven’t 
they, Dick?” asked Janet. 

“They sure have,” he said. “And I’m going 
to do like an Indian would do and trail them 
’till I get that basket back!” 

“Do you think they took it to their camp?” 
asked Janet. 

“I guess they did,” her brother said. “Come 
on, we’ll go get it.” 

“But daddy told us not to go to the Gipsy 
camp again,” Janet objected. 


78 


Two Wild Cherries 


Dick thought this over for a moment or two, 
and then, giving his head a shake, as he did 
when he came up after having ducked under 
water when swimming, he said: 

“Daddy told us not to go to the Gipsy camp 
to get back Grandma’s cameo pin. Well, we 
aren’t going after that . We’re going to get 
back our basket of lunch. That’s all right; 
isn’t it?” 

“I guess maybe yes,” said Janet. Certainly 
it seemed right. And she very much wanted 
some of that good lunch for she was getting 
more and more hungry every minute. 

“Then come on!” invited her brother. 
“We’ll be Indians and we’ll trail that lunch 
basket to the Gipsy camp in the cranberry bog.” 

Janet was no longer afraid of going into the 
cranberry bog, though she was timid of the Gip¬ 
sies. She had learned that though it was called 
a cranberry bog, or swamp, it wasn’t really 
that. At times the water was deep over the 
low cranberry bushes—bushes almost as low as 
strawberry vines. But this was only when 
there was danger of a frost, and the bog, or 
swamp was purposely flooded so the bushes 
would not freeze. Sometimes, too, the bog was 


An Indian Trail 


79 

flooded to kill off the bugs and worms that, 
otherwise, would spoil the crop. 

A cranberry bog has little ditches running 
through it, and these ditches connect with a 
pond or stream of water. But there are gates, 
or dams to keep the water out of the cranberry 
bog when it isn’t needed there. 

It is in the spring that the cranberry bogs or 
swamps are flooded. In the fall they dry out 
so the berries can be picked ready for Thanks¬ 
giving. Just now, Janet knew, the cranberry 
bog, near where the Gipsies were camped, was 
dry enough to be walked across in low shoes. 
However there were some low, swampy spots 
in the bog even in quite dry weather. 

“What will you do when you get to the Gip¬ 
sies?” asked Janet of Dick, as they walked 
along together through the woods. 

“I’ll tell ’em I want our lunch basket back,” 
he answered. 

“You won’t say anything about Grandma’s 
cameo pin; will you ?” 

“Nope,” said Dick. 

“Oh, dear!” sighed Janet. 

“What’s the matter?” her brother wanted to 
know. 


8o 


Two Wild Cherries 


“I thought maybe if you saw the pin around 
anywhere you could pick it up,” said Janet. 

“Oh, I could do that —sure!” declared Dick. 
“It's only that we mustn’t go to the Gipsy 
camp on purpose for the pin. If we go about 
the lunch basket that’s all right.” 

Well, of course that wasn’t exactly right. 
Mr. Cherry, in telling Dick and Janet to keep 
away from the Gipsies, and not to ask about 
the pin, had meant that they were not to go 
there on any account. But Dick thought it all 
had to do with the lost pin, and he imagined 
it was proper to go and ask about the basket. 

“I hope they don’t eat up all the nice lunch 
and the chicken sandwiches,” sighed Janet as 
she jumped over a little puddle of water after 
Dick. 

“I hope not,” he agreed. “Come on—what 
you stopping for?” he called as he looked back 
and saw that Janet was not with him. 

“I just want to pick this red flower,” she said. 

Dick watched her breaking the stem of a 
scarlet blossom, and, a moment later, his sister 
gave a cry of pain. 

“What’s the matter?” shouted Dick, running 
back toward her. “Did a snake bite you?” 


An Indian Trail 


8i 


“No! No !" sobbed Janet, clasping the wrist 
of her left hand in her right fingers. “But a 
bee stung me, Dick! Oh, it hurts!" 

“Let's see!" demanded Dick standing close 
to his sister. 

She unclasped her fingers and showed him a 
little round, white spot on her wrist. Around 
the spot her wrist was quite red and was be¬ 
ginning to swell, so quickly did the poison from 
the bee's sting act. 

“Oh, it hurts!" and Janet was now crying. 
“It hurts terrible!" 

“Here! Let me see if the stinger's in it yet," 
exclaimed Dick, taking hold of her hand. “If 
the stinger's in I got to get it out. Jim Blake 
told me, and his father keeps bees, so he knows. 
Wait 'till I look." 

Dick had hard work to keep Janet from pull¬ 
ing her stung wrist away from him, but he 
managed to get a good look at it and decided the 
bee had not left its stinger in. 

Dick's idea was right—if a bee, wasp or hor¬ 
net leaves, in the wound he makes, his stinger, 
the wound will be much more sore and painful, 
and it will not heal as quickly, as it will if the 
stinger is taken out. 


82 


Two Wild Cherries 


The stinger of honey bees, and other such 
insects, is shaped like a tiny arrow, with barbs 
on each side of the point, like the barb on one 
side of a fish hook. It is these barbs that hold 
the stinger in the skin, that is if the wound is 
deep enough. 

But nearly always a bee will give a sudden 
jab with the stinger, at the same time putting 
in some acid poison, just as does a mosquito. 
Then the bee flies away. If a bee leaves the 
stinger in a wound, that bee dies, for they have 
but one stinger. 

“Oh, Dick! It hurts terrible!” sobbed Janet. 

“I know it,” agreed her brother. “I was 
stung once. But HI put some mud on for you, 
Janet. That will make it feel better/’ 

“How can mud stop a bee sting ?” asked the 
little girl. 

“I don’t know,” Dick answered, “but it does. 
Ammonia out of a bottle is better, but we 
haven’t got any of that, so we can take mud. 
Come on—I’ll put some on your wrist.” 

Dick led Janet back to the little stream they 
had crossed a moment before, and picking up 
some mud from the bank, he bound it on her 
wrist with some wet moss. 


An Indian Trail 83 

“Oh, it feels better already,” Janet said, smil¬ 
ing through her tears. “Thanks, Dick.” 

“That’s all right,” he said. “Now do you 
want to go on the Indian trail after our lunch?” 

“Yes,” she said. “I’m hungry. That was a 
mean bee to sting me, but it doesn’t hurt so 
much now. He bit me just when I picked the 
flower, and then I dropped the blossom.” 

“He must have been on it and you must have 
squeezed him,” said Dick. “Wait now, and I’ll 
tie my handkerchief around your wrist and that 
will keep the mud on,” offered Dick, and this he 
did. 

“My arm will be muddy, but I don’t care— 
it’s better than a bee sting,” said Janet, wiping 
away her tears. 

“Does it hurt much now ?” asked her brother. 

“Not much,” she said, “but it feels funny. 
I guess it’s swelling up.” 

“Yes, bee stings always swell, even if you get 
the stinger out. But come on—let’s go and 
find our lunch basket.” 

Janet followed Dick, wondering why it was 
that the mud made a bee sting less painful. 
Later on she found out. It is because when a 
bee stings he puts a strong acid in one’s blood. 


8 4 


Two Wild Cherries 


Ammonia is just the opposite to an acid, being 
what is called an alkali. Most mud is also an 
alkali and this neutralizes or takes the poison 
out of the acid from the sting. 

On through the woods went the children, and 
Janet was careful to pick no more flowers. 
The sun was still shining brightly, but noon 
had passed. It was the dinner hour of Dick 
and Janet some time since, and they wished, 
very much, for the good things in their lunch 
basket. 

“Are we getting near the Gipsy camp, 
Dick?’’ asked Janet. 

“Yes, pretty soon, now,” he answered. 

He led the way along a narrow path. Sud¬ 
denly Janet, who was close behind him, clutched 
her brother by the coat, pulling it. 

“Look!” she whispered. “Look!” 

She pointed to something in a tree. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE FORTUNE TELLER 

Dick looked toward where Janet directed 
him, her fingers wiggling excitedly as she 
stretched out her arm to point. 

“Do you mean that hornets’ nest?” asked 
Dick, for he saw one of them in the tree. “I’m 
not going to knock that down, Janet, if that’s 
what you mean,” he said. “I should think 
you’d been stung enough, anyhow.” 

“No, I don’t mean the hornets’ nest,” ex¬ 
claimed Janet. “But see—our basket of lunch! 
There it is, hanging on a branch!” 

Dick looked for a moment, gazing a little to 
one side of where he had first fixed his eyes on 
the hornets’ nest. Then he cried: 

“Oh, so it is! How did it ever get there?” 

“I don’t know,” Janet answered. “But it’s 
like a Christmas tree; isn’t it, with a present on; 
isn’t it, Dick?” 

“Yes, and it’s a fine present, too,” exclaimed 
the boy. “I’m good and hungry now. I hope 
85 


86 


Two Wild Cherries 


they left the lunch in and didn't just hang up 
the empty basket." 

“Who you s'pose did it?" asked Janet as the 
two children walked slowly toward the tree, on 
a lower limb of which the lunch basket was 
hanging by the handle. 

“Oh, it was those Gipsies, of course," her 
brother answered. “They took the basket 
away. But they left the lunch in!" he added a 
moment later. For he had hurried forward 
and lifted the basket down. It was not up 
very high. 

“Is it all there?" Janet wanted to know. 

“Yes, I guess so," and Dick raised the nap¬ 
kin cover Jane had put over the basket. “Yes, 
everything is all right," he added. 

“Oh, goodie!” exclaimed Janet. “Fm so 
hungry! Dick," she asked a moment later, 
“don't you s'pose maybe a bear did this just for 
fun—took our basket away and hung it on a 
tree?" 

“There aren't any bears here in these 
woods!" insisted the boy. “It was the Gipsies! 
Look! Here's another one of their gold ban¬ 
gles." 

It was a brass disk, not a gold one, that Dick 


The Fortune Teller 87; 

picked up, but it was as bright and shining a 
yellow as the more precious golden metal would 
have been. 

“It’s just like the one I found back at the 
stump-table,” he went on. Taking the first 
bangle from his pocket he held both in the palm 
of his hand. They were just alike—tiny round, 
thin disks of brass, with a hole in the edge for 
stringing. 

“The same Gipsy was at both places,” said 
Dick. “I guess it was one of the fortune¬ 
tellers. She took our basket and then she left 
it here.” 

“Why didn’t she eat it?” Janet wanted to 
know. 

“Maybe she wasn’t hungry,” spoke Dick. 
“Or maybe she didn’t want the other Gipsies 
to know she had it. So she hung it here and 
maybe she was coming back after dark and get 
it.” 

“Well, she won’t get it now, ’cause we have 
it,” and Janet laughed. The pain of the bee 
sting was almost gone, and she was ready to 
enjoy the picnic, now that the lunch was found. 

“Yes, we have it,” said Dick. “And we’d 
better eat it right away.” 


88 


Two Wild Cherries 


“Are you going to eat it here?” his sister 
asked him. “I’m thirsty and there isn’t any 
water to drink. And I’ll be thirstier, when I 
eat, ’cause I always am.” 

“We’ll go back to the spring by the stump,” 
decided her brother. “I guess we don’t have to 
go to the Gipsy camp now.” 

“No,” agreed Janet. “We don’t have to go 
there now to get our lunch basket, and daddy 
said we weren’t to go to look for Grandma’s 
pin. So we just can’t go.” 

“Yes,” agreed Dick. “We’ll go back to the 
stump table now and have our picnic.” 

Back through the woods tramped the two 
Wild Cherries. They were a little tired, but 
they did not mind that for they were think¬ 
ing of the good things to eat in their lunch 
basket. 

They had not come within sight of the Gipsy 
tents and the red wagons of the camp near the 
cranberry bog. The camp was about half a 
mile farther on from where they had found the 
hanging basket. 

At the spring was half a cocoanut shell for a 
dipper. Dick filled this and gave his sister 


The Fortune Teller 89 

some of the clear, sparkling water. Then he 
dipped up a drink for himself. 

“Now, we’re ready to eat,” said Janet. 

The sandwiches and other things from the 
basket were spread out on the stump and the 
children began their picnic lunch. It was half 
an hour late but it tasted all the better on that 
account. 

“Oh, look!” suddenly cried Janet, pointing to 
a saucy red squirrel. He had leaped down 
from the tree and picked up in his teeth a piece 
of bread the little girl had dropped. For a 
moment the tiny creature sat up on a dried leaf 
for a cushion, with the bread in his mouth, 
looking at the little picnic party. Then, with 
a whisk of his tail, the red squirrel darted up 
into a tree. Putting the piece of bread down 
in a crotch, so it would not fall, “Mr. Rusty 
Tail,” as Dick named him, began to scold in 
his shrill, chattery voice. 

“What makes him do that?” asked Janet, 
laughing. 

“Oh, I guess he’s angry ’cause we came to 
his woods,” chuckled Dick. “Red squirrels are 
always scolding like that, same as blue jays; but 


90 


Two Wild Cherries 


they don't do anything else much. Here you 
are, Rusty Tail," and Dick tossed a bread crust 
toward the chattering squirrel. “Have some 
more!" 

The little animal left his perch in the crotch 
of the tree to come down after the crust and 
then, carrying it up in his mouth and taking 
his place once more, he scolded again, louder 
than at first. 

“Maybe he's saying thank you," suggested 
Janet. 

“Maybe," agreed Dick. 

The children had almost finished their lunch, 
stopping now and then to get a drink of 
water at the spring when suddenly, the 
silence of the woods was broken by a loud 
cry of: 

“Hay! Hay! Hay!" 

“Oh, who's that?" exclaimed Janet. 

“Only Mr. Blue Jay!" chuckled Dick. “I 
guess he wants something to eat same as Mr. 
Rusty Tail had." 

Down out of a tree fluttered a big, bold-look¬ 
ing bird, with blue and white feathers, a crest 
on his head and a sharp, savage bill. He flew 
to where some crumbs were scattered, picked 


The Fortune Teller 91 

up a bit of cookie and swung up into a tree with 
it. 

Then, holding the piece of cookie down on 
the branch by one claw, the jay began picking 
off bits in his beak. While he was doing this, 
and while Janet and Dick were watching, an¬ 
other jay came fluttering through the glade. 

"Hay! Hay!” he called. And then he 
added another cry that sounded exactly as if he 
said: "Fish-hook! Fish-hook! Fish-hook!” 

"Oh, isn’t he funny!” laughed Janet, for each 
time the jay made this sound he bobbed up and 
down like a cuckoo popping out of the door in 
the clock. "What makes him say ‘fish-hook,’ 
Dick?” 

"I guess maybe he’d like to take a fish-hook 
and get that piece of cookie away from the 
other jay,” said the boy. "Here’s a bit for 
you,” he added, tossing some cookie crumbs to 
the second jay. The bird flew down after 
them, picking them up hungrily. 

Then, in the air overhead sounded another 
cry, as though some one were laughing: 

"Haw! Haw! Haw!” 

"That’s a black crow,” said Janet. "I know 
his call.” 


92 


Two Wild Cherries 


“Yes, that's a crow," agreed Dick, “and I 
guess it must be getting late, when the crows be¬ 
gin to fly home. We’d better be getting home 
ourselves. There’s no more lunch to eat.’’ 

“All right,’’ agreed Janet. “But we didn’t 
play pirates and dig up any gold.’’ 

“Well, we had fun playing Indians on the 
trail, and we found our lunch and the bangles,’’ 
said Dick. “I’ll give you one to keep,’’ he 
added, passing to Janet one of the two Gipsy 
coins he had found. 

“Oh, thank you, Dickie," she exclaimed. 
“I’ll pin it on my doll that Grandma gave me." 

The children reached home without any other 
adventures befalling them, and to their moth¬ 
er’s question as to whether they had had a good 
time, Dick answered by saying: 

“We had lots of fun, and the Gipsies took our 
lunch but we got it back and—" 

“I got stung by a bee and Dick put mud on 
it!" broke in Janet, fearing she would not get 
a chance to tell her share in the day’s happen¬ 
ings. 

“Oh, those Gipsies!" exclaimed Mrs. Cherry. 
“I must get your father to do something about 
them! They are too bold!" 


The Fortune Teller 93 

“The police didn’t get Grandma’s cameo pin 
back yet; did they?” asked Janet, with faint 
hope. 

“No, dear, they didn’t,” her mother said, 
sadly enough. 

That night she talked matters over with Mr. 
Cherry. 

“I think we shall go to that camp ourselves,” 
he said, “and take the children with us.” 

“What for ?” asked his wife in surprise. 

“To put an end to the idea in the heads of 
Janet and Dick that the Gipsies have mother’s 
pin,” he replied. “As it is now those two Wild 
Cherries of ours will slip off to that camp every 
chance they get, if they think they can. Now 
I don’t believe that Gipsy boy took the pin. I 
think Janet dropped it somewhere around the 
house, though maybe we shall never find it. 

“But if you and I went to the camp, Helen, 
and asked, before the children, whether the 
Gipsies knew anything of the pin, and if they 
said they didn’t, then Janet and Dick would be 
satisfied. They wouldn’t want to go there, hop¬ 
ing to get the cameo back.” 

“Well, perhaps that is a good idea,” said Mrs. 
Cherry, slowly. 


94 


Two Wild Cherries 


So the next afternoon she and her husband, 
with Dick and Janet, started for the cranberry 
bog, near where the Gipsies were camped. 

“What are you going for?” asked Janet. 
“Are you going to have your fortune told, 
Mother?” 

“Nonsense!” laughed Mrs. Cherry. “You 
know it is silly and wrong to think that anyone 
can tell what is going to happen to you, by a 
so-called ‘fortune’ or otherwise. No Gipsy nor 
any other person can do that.” 

“Course not!” agreed Dick. 

But the children were rather surprised, after 
hearing their mother say this, to see her and 
their father walk straight toward the tent in 
the Gipsy camp, outside of which was a banner 
with the words: 

MADAME DEBORAH 
FORTUNE TELLER 

“Oh, maybe daddy is going to have his for¬ 
tune told,” whispered Janet. 

“Hu!” grunted Dick. 

He and his sister followed their parents into 
the tent of the Gipsy fortune teller. Around 



Then Janet caught sight of a dark-faced boy 













The Fortune Teller 95 

the encampment were other tents, and back in 
the woods were red and yellow wagons, glitter¬ 
ing with bits of mirrors and other colored glass. 
Near the wagons were some horses and dogs. 

Dick and Janet looked around. They saw 
several Gipsy men and women who, however, 
did not pay much attention to the visitors. 
Then Janet caught sight of a dark-faced boy, 
about Dick’s age. 

“Look! Look!” whispered the girl. “There’s 
the boy who was at our house begging the time 
I lost Grandma’s cameo! There he is!” 


CHAPTER X 


THE RED WAGON 

Mrs. Cherry heard what Janet whispered 
to Dick. 

“Janet,” asked her mother, “are you sure it's 
the same boy?” 

“Oh, yes, Mother, I’m sure!” answered 
Janet. 

Mrs. Cherry said something to her husband 
in a low voice. 

“Of course! Yes! That would be a good 
idea,” he replied. “I say, my boy, will you 
come here a moment ?” he went on in a pleasant 
voice, at the same time motioning with his hand 
for the Gipsy lad to approach. 

“What’s the matter ?” demanded the boy with 
the dark hair and eyes. “I don’t tell fortunes.” 
He spoke rather rudely. 

“No, I don’t want you to tell my fortune!” 
laughed Mr. Cherry. “But I want you to come 
in while I talk to Madame Deborah.” 

96 


The Red Wagon 


97 


t “She can talk your talk as well as I can,” said 
the boy. “She speaks English and Gipsy talk 
too.” 

“I suppose so,” and Mr. Cherry smiled. 
“But I want to talk to you, anyhow. Come on, 
please!” 

One of the Gipsy men, lounging in the en¬ 
trance to a tent spoke sharply to the lad, using 
words in a strange language. The boy an¬ 
swered in the same tongue and then slowly ad¬ 
vanced toward the tent of the fortune teller. 

Meanwhile Madame Deborah, as she called 
herself, had come to the flap of her tent, to look 
out and see what all the talk was about. To 
her Mr. Cherry spoke, saying: 

“I want to ask you some questions, Madame 
Deborah, and also talk to this boy. No, we 
didn’t come to have our fortunes told. I don’t 
believe in such things, but if other folks do, 
and want to pay for having you tell them things, 
that’s their own affair. But I take it you are a 
business woman and one of the leaders of this 
tribe of Gipsies—maybe you are their Queen.” 

“No, nothing like that,” answered Madame 
Deborah in a gentle voice, and speaking, as 
Dick said afterward, “just like our school 


9 8 


Two Wild Cherries 


teacher.” In fact the Gipsy woman talked very 
good English. “I am not the Queen,” she went 
on. “She is in another camp. What is it you 
wish? Please come in and sit down, you and 
the children, and as for you, Tamma—” 

She looked at the Gipsy boy as if about to 
order him away. 

“He told me to come in,” said Tamma, which 
seemed to be his name. 

“Yes, I wish to talk to him and to you about 
a valuable cameo pin that is missing,” said Mr. 
Cherry. 

“I didn’t take any pin!” burst out the boy, 
angrily. 

“We Gipsies do not steal, and you should not 
say we do, even if you believe we cannot tell 
fortunes!” said Madame Deborah, and she, too, 
looked angry. 

“I’m not saying you did,” spoke Mr. Cherry 
gently. “In fact I am sure you had nothing to 
do with taking the pin. What I want you to 
do is to tell my children so, in order that they 
will not be coming to this camp looking for it. 
My little girl was wearing her grandmother’s 
cameo pin on the day that this boy—Tamma— 


The Red Wagon 


99 


came to our house to ask for something to eat.” 

“Tamma should not have done that,” said 
Madame Deborah. “We Gipsies do not need 
to beg.” She spoke proudly. 

“I was hungry,” said Tamma in a low voice, 
and he looked a bit ashamed of himself with 
Madame Deborah’s black, snapping eyes fixed 
on him. 

“Do not do it again,” she said in a low voice. 
“Is that all you wish of me—to have me tell 
your children that we did not take the pin?” 
she asked. 

“Yes,” answered the father of Dick and 
Janet. The children had seated themselves on 
little camp stools in the tent, and were gazing 
curiously about. It was very clean in Madame 
Deborah’s canvas house. There was a table 
covered with a bright red cloth, and on the 
table was a shining, brass, kerosene lamp. The 
tent was divided into two parts by yellow cur¬ 
tains, and in the second part was a bed heaped 
high with pillows and blankets, a gay red and 
yellow spread covered everything. 

“Why should you think we took the cameo 
pin?” asked Madame Deborah. 


100 


Two Wild Cherries 


Then Mr. Cherry told the story of Grand¬ 
ma's visit, and how Janet was allowed to wear 
the pin a little while. 

“Soon after that it was missed," went on her 
father. “And we thought perhaps Tamma 
might have picked it up by mistake. However 
the police say he did not, and now I want you 
to tell my children that the pin isn’t here. That 
will keep them from wanting to come to this 
camp and, perhaps, save them from being lost 
in the woods." 

“It is a strange request," and the fortune¬ 
teller smiled. “But I will tell them as you 
wish. The Gipsies did not take your Grand¬ 
mother’s pin," she went on, smiling again this 
time at Dick and Janet. “And you should not 
come to our camp if your father does not wish 
it. Though you will always be welcome," she 
added, kindly. 

“But they mustn’t come," quickly said Mrs. 
Cherry. “I’d be afraid the dogs might bite 
them!" 

“Our dogs will not bite," said the Gipsy 
woman. “But it is better that the children do 
not come, I think. Is this all you wish of me ?” 

“Yes, thank you," said Mr. Cherry. “I 


The Red Wagon ioi 

know you Gipsies have camped here for several 
years, and you have done no harm. I feel sure 
you did not take the pin, Tamma.” 

“Course I didn’t/’ said the boy, shuffling his 
feet about in the dirt as he stood near the flap 
of the tent. 

“All right,” said the children’s father. “Re¬ 
member that, my two Wild Cherries, and don’t 
come to this camp again.” 

“Two Wild Cherries—what a pretty name!” 
murmured the fortune-teller. 

“It fits them,” said their mother. “They are 
a bit wild at times.” 

“All children are—it is their nature,” and 
Madame Deborah nodded and smiled again. 
“You do not wish your fortune told?” she 
asked, turning to the children’s mother. 

“No, thank you,” said Mrs. Cherry. “We 
only came on the children’s account, and we 
shall be going now.” 

“I hope you find the cameo pin,” murmured 
the Gipsy, and she held back the tent flap so 
they could get out. 

Dick pulled at his mother’s dress and 
hoarsely whispered: 

“Mother! Mother!” 


102 


Two Wild Cherries 


“What is it?” she inquired, looking at him. 

“Are you going to ask which one it was took 
our lunch basket and hung it on a tree like a 
hornets’ nest?” 

“Oh, yes!” and Mrs. Cherry turned to her 
husband. She spoke to him in a low voice. 
He laughed and remarked, 

“It will do no harm to inquire, I suppose.” 
Then, turning to Madame Deborah, he said: 
“Did one of the boys, as a joke, take my chil¬ 
dren’s lunch basket the other day?” 

“Lunch basket!” repeated the fortune-teller. 
“Lunch basket— Oh, perhaps Tamma may 
know something of that. I shall ask him! 
She spoke rapidly to the Gipsy lad in his own 
language and he replied to her. Then, in Eng¬ 
lish, Madame Deborah explained: 

“Tamma, he is sometimes a little wild, 
like—” 

“Like my Cherries!” laughed the father of 
Dick and Janet. 

“Yes. And he took the basket for fun. He 
did not intend to steal it—no—never! It was 
only for fun, and he was watching your boy 
and girl from behind the bushes. If they had 
not found the basket as they did, he would have 


The Red Wagon 


103 

returned it to them. He is sorry; are you not, 
Tamma ?” 

Tamma murmured something, it might have 
been that he said he was sorry, or it might have 
been almost anything. Mr. Cherry did not 
bother further about it. 

“Did Tamma lose the bangles ?” whispered 
Janet. She hoped she and Dick could keep 
those they had found. 

“Oh, about the bangles,” went on Mr. 
Cherry. “My children picked up some in the 
woods, where Tamma must have dropped them 
as he took the basket.” 

“It is no matter,” and the fortune-teller 
smiled at the children. “Let them keep the 
bangles—we have plenty more,” which was in¬ 
deed the truth. 

“Thank you,” murmured Janet. 

“You are welcome, my dear. We want you 
to know that we Gipsies are not so bad as many 
think. Good-bye!” 

“Good-bye!” echoed the Wild Cherries as 
they left the tent. 

Tamma shuffled off by himself, glancing side¬ 
ways out of his black eyes at Dick and Janet. 
The visitors started away from the camp, the 


104 


Two Wild Cherries 


children rather quiet because they were think¬ 
ing of what had happened. Madame Deborah 
stood in her tent, watching the Cherries until 
a turn in the path hid them from view. None 
of the other Gipsies seemed to pay any atten¬ 
tion to the callers. They sat in silence. Even 
the dogs did not bark or growl. 

As Mr. and Mrs. Cherry, with the children, 
passed out of sight of the camp, along the path 
through the cranberry bog, they could hear be¬ 
hind them the murmur of voices—voices of the 
Gipsy men and women. 

“Do you think they are angry because you 
spoke as you did to Tamma and Madame 
Deborah ?” asked Mrs. Cherry of her husband. 

“Oh, no,” he said. “I guess it isn't the first 
time the Gipsies have been talked to when things 
were missing. Maybe they are honest, but 
they have the name—at least some tribes have 
—of taking things.” 

“Well, if Tamma didn't take Grandma’s pin 
—who did?” demanded Dick. 

“It’s hard to say,” answered his father. 
“Maybe we shall find it some day.” 

“I’m afraid not,” sighed his wife. 

Dick and Janet had a wonderful story to tell 


The Red Wagon 


105 

their boy and girl chums next day about the 
visit to the Gipsy camp. 

“Did they cook things in a pot over a camp 
fire?” asked Henry Merton. 

“Some of them did,” answered Dick. “But 
I saw oil stoves in one or two tents.” 

“Did you see any kidnapped children?” asked 
Lulu Wilson, in a whisper. 

“Course we didn’t!” laughed Janet. “Gip¬ 
sies don’t kidnap you.” 

“Sadie Clark said they did,” declared Mary 
Nestor. 

“Well, we didn’t see any,” spoke Dick. “I 
wish I had one of their dogs, though.” 

“Mother wouldn’t let you keep it,” said his 
sister. 

“Well, maybe she would,” Dick retorted. 
“I’m going to ask her.” 

However just then Sam Ward suggested that 
they have a game of hide-and-go-seek, and 
while this was being arranged Dick forgot 
about the Gipsy dog, which was just as well. 
For his mother never would have consented to 
let him have one, I’m sure. 

“All ready!” called Jim Blake, who had been 
chosen to “blind” while the others hid. “I’ll 


106 Two Wild Cherries 

count up to five hundred by fives, and then I’m 
coming! Get ready!” He leaned up against 
a tree—for the children were playing in the 
grove where Janet and Dick had eaten their 
picnic lunch a few days before. “Five—ten— 
fifteen—” counted Jim. 

Away scampered the boys and girls, looking 
for secret places to hide, from which they 
might rush in, back to the tree where Jim was 
“blinding. ,, They hoped to be able to get there 
while he was out searching for them, in which 
case they could touch the tree and cry: 

“Home free!” 

“I know a good place where we can hide,” 
said Dick to his sister. 

“Where?” she asked. 

“In that hole under the tree—the place where 
we went for the pirate cave and I caught my 
foot.” 

“Oh, I’d be afraid there,” said Janet. 

“Pooh!” exclaimed Dick. “It’s all right if 
you don’t go in too far. Come on!” 

So he and Janet rushed on through the woods 
toward the “pirate cave,” as they called it. 
But, by some chance, the two Wild Cherries 
took the wrong path. 


The Red Wagon 


107 


“I don’t see that cave!” exclaimed Janet, 
looking about when they had run some little dis¬ 
tance away from the “home” tree. 

“I don’t, either,” agreed Dick. “Well, we’ll 
find another place to hide. Come on!” 

They went deeper into the woods, their feet 
rustling over the dried leaves. Suddenly Janet 
stopped and caught Dick’s hand, pulling him to 
a stop. 

“Look! Look!” she whispered. “A red 
wagon!” 

Just ahead of them, under a tree, was a red 
wagon, with yellow stripes around it, and on the 
corners were glittering pieces of colored glass, 
while on either side of the vehicle was a big 
mirror. 

“Oh, it’s one of the Gipsy wagons!” cried 
Dick. 

“Yes,” agreed his sister. “But what’s it do¬ 
ing here all alone in the woods ?” 

“Maybe they lost it,” Dick said. 

“Pooh! You can’t lose anything as big as a 
wagon!” declared the girl. “But maybe they 
forgot it.” 

She and Dick walked closer, trying to make 
as little noise as possible. There was no sign 


108 Two Wild Cherries 

of life near the red wagon. No horse was 
hitched to it, nor were any dogs asleep under 
it, as was the case back at the Gipsy camp. 
And, as the children approached nearer, they 
saw no dark-skinned man or woman in the 
wagon. 

There was a door at the back of it, and a 
short flight of steps leading up. Looking in¬ 
side, Dick and Janet saw that the wagon was 
fitted up like a little house. They could see a 
stove, a table which could be let down against 
the side and some stools. Farther on, up to¬ 
ward the front of the wagon, were some beds, 
or, rather, “bunks,” like the berths in a Pullman 
sleeping car. 

“That’s one of the wagons the Gipsies live 
in when they don’t live in tents at camp,” ex¬ 
plained Dick. 

“Yes, I guess so,” agreed Janet. 

And then a wild idea came into Janet’s head. 

“Oh, Dick!” she exclaimed, “this would be a 
dandy place to hide so Jim couldn’t find us! 
Let’s go in the red wagon! Let’s hide there!” 

Dick hesitated a moment. He looked back 
through the woods. Faint and far off sounded 
the voices of the boys and girls playing hide- 


The Red Wagon 


109 

and-go-seek. Jim had finished counting and 
was now searching. 

“Let’s hide in here!” whispered Janet again. 
“S’posin’ there’s a Gipsy in there?” sug¬ 
gested her brother. 

“If there is—we’ll come out,” said Janet. 
“But I don’t guess there is! Come on—we’ll 
hide in the red wagon!” 

And the two Wild Cherries climbed the little 
flight of steps and entered the red Gipsy van. 
They went softly in at first, but as no one called 
to them they advanced more boldly. 

“Oh, isn’t it cute in here?” murmured Janet, 
as they walked through a sort of aisle in the 
middle of the wagon, and found themselves in 
the bedroom, with the two berths on either side. 
“I love it in here. I wish—” 

“Hark!” suddenly exclaimed Dick. “I hear 
a noise!” 

A moment later there was a loud slam, as 
though a door had been shut. 


CHAPTER XI 


JIGGLES AND WIGGLES 

Dick looked at Janet and Janet looked at 
Dick. Thus the two Wild Cherries looked at 
each other. 

“Did you—now did you hear that?” asked 
Janet in a whisper. 

“Yes—yes, I did,” and Dick also whispered. 
“Did you?” 

Janet nodded her head to show that she had. 
Then she asked: 

“What was it?” 

“I guess the door banged shut,” suggested 
Dick. “I can open it again. You don’t need 
to be scared,” he said quickly, as he saw Janet’s 
lips quivering, as they sometimes did just be¬ 
fore her eyes filled with tears. 

“I—I—now I’m not scared!” she exclaimed. 
“But maybe you can’t open the door if it’s 
locked!” 

“Who would lock it?” demanded Dick. 


no 


Jiggles and Wiggles hi 

“Maybe a Gipsy might come along to see if 
his wagon was all right, and maybe—” 

Dick did not wait for his sister to finish what 
she started to say, but rushed toward the back 
door of the wagon. It really had a door, just 
like those in your house, only smaller, of course, 
and it had a knob, hinges and a lock. Dick 
turned the brass knob. The door swung open, 
letting in a flood of golden, yellow sunshine 
from out of doors. 

“See!” cried Dick in delight. “It’s all right. 
No Gipsies or anything. I guess the wind blew 
the door shut.” 

“I guess so,” agreed Janet, her fears now 
over. 

“This sure is a dandy place to hide,” went 
on Dick. “Jim will never find us here. Let’s 
go back in the place where the beds are.” 

“And we can shut the door,” his sister added. 
“Long as we can open it again, it’s all right to 
shut it; and then Jim can’t find us so easy.” 

“All right,” said Dick, so the door to the 
Gipsy wagon was shut again. Back into the 
little front bedroom of the van—the room with 
two cute bunks, one on either side went the 
children. The beds were all made up, with 


112 


Two Wild Cherries 


clean sheets, pillow cases and bright blankets. 

“Oh, Fd just love to lie down on one of those 
beds,” said Janet. 

“So would I,” spoke her brother. “Come 
on, let’s do it!” he proposed. “The Gipsies 
won’t care. Maybe they don’t want this wagon 
any more, ’cause they left it out here in the 
woods all alone.” 

“Maybe,” murmured Janet. The gay van 
was certainly off all by itself in the woods, some 
distance from the camp, and from the other 
wagons, the tents, the horses, the dogs and Ma¬ 
dame Deborah, the fortune-teller. 

“We’ll just lie down here on the beds,” went 
on Janet. “And after a while, when Jim can’t 
find us and gives up, then we can walk in free.” 

“And we won’t tell where we hid, either,” 
said Dick. “Then we can have this place for 
another time.” 

Janet nodded her head and, stepping, on a 
low stool near one of the bunks, she scrambled 
up. 

“Oh, it’s so nice and soft!” she murmured as 
she stretched out. 

“They’re nicer beds than in sleeping cars,” 


Jiggles and Wiggles 113 

said Dick. For he and Janet had often trav¬ 
eled in Pullman sleepers. 

“Now we must keep still,” suggested his 
sister. “Jim might come this way to look for 
us and he’d hear us—so keep still.” 

“All right,” Dick agreed as he wiggled 
himself into a comfortable nest in the soft 
bed. 

Meanwhile, back at the tree where Jim had 
“blinded” until the others were hidden, the 
game went on. At first two or three of the 
boys and girls got “in free,” running up and 
touching the home tree while Jim was off look¬ 
ing for them. 

Then Jim caught sight of Lulu Wilson peer¬ 
ing out from behind a bush. 

“Tit-tat Lulu!” cried Jim, and running back 
he touched the tree before Lulu could do so. 
This meant Lulu would have to “blind,” and do 
the searching next time. 

But Jim was not yet done. There were oth¬ 
ers, beside the two Wild Cherries, hiding out 
and these he must find, unless he called: 

“Givie up! Givie up! Come in, come in, 
wherever you are!” 


114 Two Wild Cherries 

But Jim was not yet ready to do this. He 
wanted to search a bit more before giving up. 

Those who had gotten in free, or who had 
been “tit-tatted,” and seen before they got a 
chance to touch the home tree, now gathered 
around it while Jim searched for those still out. 
Tom Jenkins, who had crawled inside a hollow 
log, stuck his head out to take a look and see if 
the coast were clear. 

“Cucumber! Cucumber!” suddenly called 
Sadie Clark, as she saw him. This meant for 
Tom to run in and touch the tree while he had 
the chance, since Jim was some distance away. 
The children used the word “cucumber” in¬ 
stead of “come on in,” thinking Jim might not 
know what it meant. 

But Jim did, for he had played this game 
before. Thinking that one of the players was 
making a dash for the tree, to touch it and get 
in free, Jim started back. Seeing this Sadie 
called: 

“Tobacco! Tobacco!” 

This was intended as a warning for Tom to 
crawl back in the log, which he did. 

But when Jim saw no one coming to the home 
tree he thought it was a false alarm, and walked 


Jiggles and Wiggles 115 

farther off to spy some one. Then Sadie called 
once more: 

“Cucumber! Cucumber !” ^ 

This meant the coast was again clear ailcftor 
Tom to rush in, which he did. Out of the lo£ 
he wiggled. Jim saw him and there was a close 
race, but Tom won, and got home free. 

“I’m going to give up the others,” Jim said. 
“It takes too long. Come in! Come in where- 
ever you are!” he shouted. “Givie up! Givie 
up!” 

This was the signal for all who were still hid¬ 
ing out to come in free. Several did, but not 
Dick and Janet. 

“Where are the two Wild Cherries?” asked 
Henry Merton. 

“They picked out a good hiding place, where- 
ever it is,” said Jim. Then he called again: 
“Come in! Come in wherever you are! 
Givie up! Givie up!” 

But though others took up the call, there was 
no answering shout from Dick and Janet, and, 
after a while, the game went on without them. 

“I guess they must have gone home,” said 
Mary Nestor. 

“Maybe,” agreed Lulu Wilson. 


ii6 Two Wild Cherries 

But Dick and Janet had not gone home. 
They were still in the red wagon—the Gipsy 
van off by itself in the woods. 

It was very still and quiet in the red wagon. 
Outside could be heard the chirp of grass¬ 
hoppers in the field at the edge of the woods, 
and birds sang as they flitted through the trees. 
'Now and then a crow would seem to be laugh¬ 
ing at something as he croaked: 

“Haw! Haw! Haw!” 

Or a blue jay would perch on a limb, cock his 
crested head to one side, and yell: 

“Fish-hook! Fish-hook! Fish-hook!” 

He would teeter up and down as he called 
this, and then change to: 

“Hay! Hay! Hay!” 

At first the sounds were loud in the ears of 
Janet and Dick. But, after a while, even the 
loud voices of the jays grew fainter and farther 
off. It seemed to become very still and quiet, 
as if night were settling down. 

And the reason was—Dick and Janet had 
fallen asleep on the soft beds in the red Gipsy 
wagon. 

Sound asleep they had fallen, almost without 


Jiggles and Wiggles 


ii 7 


realizing it, so gently had slumber stolen upon 
them. At first they had closed their eyes, 
meaning to keep them shut only a moment or 
two. But each time they opened and closed 
them it was harder to make them stay open 
when they tried it again. 

And so they were asleep while the other boys 
and girls were calling to them, and while Jim 
shouted: 

“Come in! Come in wherever you are! 
Givie up! Givie up!” 

Dick and Janet did not hear him. 

After a while—a long while it was, too, more 
than an hour—Dick was suddenly awakened by 
what he afterward said were “jiggles.” He 
awoke to find himself being “jiggled” in the 
soft, comfortable berth of the Gipsy wagon. 

About the same time Janet awakened. She 
said it was the “wiggles” that caused her to 
open her eyes. 

“Dick! Dick!” called his sister. “What’s 
the matter? What makes the wagon wiggle 
so?” 

“I—now—I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m 
jiggling same as you are.” 


n8 Two Wild Cherries 

He sat up on the bunk. Then both children 
knew what had happened. 

“Oh! Oh! ,, gasped Janet. “The Gipsies 
are taking us away in the wagon! The wagon 
is going away with us in it!” 

“I—I guess it is!” faltered Dick. 

There was no doubt of it. A horse had been 
hitched to the red van and, with the two Wild 
Cherries inside, it was being hauled off through 
the woods. 


CHAPTER XII 


GIPSY LIFE 

Surprise held the two children quiet for a 
few moments after the “jiggles” and “wiggles” 
had awakened them, and made them know they 
were being taken away. Then Janet slipped 
out of the little bed to the floor of the wagon 
and cried: 

“Oh, Dick! What shall we do? The Gip¬ 
sies are taking us away!” 

“We got to do something!” decided her 
brother. 

“I thought you said Gipsies didn't kidnap 
children!” and tears were now in Janet’s eyes. 

“That’s what daddy said,” explained Dick. 

“But they’re taking us away!” Janet 
couldn’t understand it at all. “They're taking 
us away in the red wagon, Dick!” she almost 
screamed. 

“Maybe they don’t know it,” suggested Dick 
as the idea suddenly came to him. 


120 


Two Wild Cherries 


“What do you mean?” his sister asked. 

“I mean maybe they don’t know we crawled 
in here to hide.” 

Janet thought this over for a moment while 
the Gipsy van continued to roll and rumble its 
way through the woods, swaying from side to 
side over a rough road. Then the little girl 
said: 

“Maybe they didn’t! I guess they didn’t see 
us crawl inside to hide, else they would have 
told Jim and he could have found us.” 

“That’s it!” exclaimed Dick. “They didn’t 
see us come in, and the back door blew shut and 
they don’t know we’re in here and they’re mov¬ 
ing away and taking us with them—but they 
don’t know it!” 

“I guess maybe the Gipsies are good—don’t 
you think so, Dick?” asked Janet, hopefully. 

“Sure they are,” he said. “They’ll let us go 
soon as they know we’re in here. I’ll go open 
the door and holler and then they’ll stop the 
horse and we can jump out and go home/’ 

“Yes,” agreed Janet. “We don’t want to 
jump out of the wagon while it’s going, ’cause 
maybe we might sprain our legs, or something.” 


Gipsy Life 


121 


‘Til go open the door,” offered her brother. 

He made his way from the front part of the 
van, where the sleeping bunks were built in, to 
the back door—the only door, in fact, for there 
was no front one. Dick passed through the 
“kitchen” of the van. It was the place where, 
in a small cupboard, he could see packages of 
food—canned corn, tomatoes and other things. 
There were also pasteboard boxes of cookies 
and crackers, the same kind Mrs. Cherry had 
often sent Janet and Dick to get at the store. 

Dick found himself at the door of the van— 
the same door that had once slammed shut, 
frightening him and his sister. The boy 
grasped the shiny, brass knob and tried to turn 
it. 

“Can’t you get it open?” asked Janet, who 
had followed Dick to the rear of the van. 

“It seems to be—now—sorter stuck!” her 
brother said, as he pulled and tugged at the 
door. 

‘Til help,” she offered. 

But the two children, pushing with all their 
might, did not open the door. Then Janet said 
what Dick thought. 


122 


Two Wild Cherries 


“It’s locked!” she cried. 

“I—I—now—I guess it is 1” and Dick's voice 
trembled. 

“Oh! Oh!” gasped Janet. “We—we're 
locked in!” That was all she could say for a 
moment or two. “But, Dick!” she cried, “we 
got to get out! They’re taking us away, and 
maybe they don’t know we're here, but we got 
to get out!” 

“Yes,” agreed Dick, giving another tug at 
the door, “we got to get out!” 

However this was easier said than done. 
The door was either stuck or locked, and the 
two Wild Cherries could not open it. They be¬ 
gan to feel frightened. Certainly it was 
enough to frighten older children than were 
Dick and Janet—to be carried away by Gipsies, 
even if the wandering tribe didn't really mean 
to kidnap them. 

“Look out and see if you can see anybody,” 
suggested Janet, pointing to the glass windows 
on either side of the van. There was also a 
window in the door, but so high up the children 
could not see through it. The other windows 
were on either side of the kitchen of the van, 


Gipsy Life 


123 

and were covered with lace curtains—small, 
square windows they were. 

Dick looked from one and Janet from the 
other. They peered out anxiously, pressing 
their little noses quite flat against the glass. 

“All I can see are trees and bushes,” sighed 
Janet. 

“That’s all I can see on my side—trees and 
bushes,” added Dick. “We’re going through 
the woods.” 

“And it’s getting dark,” added Janet, as she 
saw long shadows cast by the sun slanting 
through the trees. “It’s getting dark and— 
and—the Gipsies have got us! Oh the Gipsies 
have got us!” She was ready to cry again. 

“Don’t cry,” begged Dick. “We—we’ll— 
now—do something.” 

“What?” asked his sister, holding back her 
sobs. 

“We’ll knock on the windows,” said Dick. 
“Then whoever is driving the horse will hear 
us and let us out.” 

“Oh, yes,” agreed Janet. “We’ll knock on 
the windows.” 

The children did this, Janet pounding on the 


124 


Two Wild Cherries 


glass with her little fists, and Dick tapping with 
his pocket knife. But the Gipsy van kept on 
moving through the woods, and the driver gave 
no sign that he heard the children. 

“We got to knock harder,” decided Dick. 

“If we do we’ll break the windows,” said his 
sister. “And we don’t want to do that.” 

“No,” agreed Dick, “we don’t. I guess 
maybe we’d better pound on the door,” he added. 
“We can kick that—on the part where the win¬ 
dow isn’t—and we can hammer it as hard as we 
like. Then maybe he will hear us.” 

So they pounded with their fists and kicked 
with their feet on the back door of the van, but 
it did no good. On rumbled the red and yellow 
Gipsy wagon through the woods. It was 
growing into late afternoon now, as the chil¬ 
dren could see by looking through the side win¬ 
dows. The shadows were growing long in the 
woods. 

“I guess the driver must be deaf,” decided 
Dick as their continued kicking and pounding 
brought no answer. 

“Deaf in both ears,” added Janet. “But we 
can do something else, Dick.” 

“What?” he asked. 


Gipsy Life 


125 


“We can holler,” said Janet. “We can holler 
like anything—same as we do when we’re play¬ 
ing hide-and-go-seek—and maybe he’ll hear us 
even if he is deaf. Come on—let’s holler.” 

The children united their voices in loud 
shouts of: 

“Let us out! Let us out! We’re locked in! 
Let us out!” 

They kept this up for some time, now and 
then changing off to pound and kick at the door. 
But nothing came of it. The rumble of the 
van over the rough road of the woods, and 
the deafness of the Gipsy driver (for, later, 
they learned that he was deaf) prevented the 
children’s calls for help from being heard. 

“I—I guess we aren’t ever going to get out 
of here,” said Janet sadly at last. 

“Oh, yes we will—sometime,” said Dick. 
“Anyhow we can get something to eat. 
There’s lots of things in this kitchen.” 

“Oh, that’s so,” agreed his sister as she looked 
on the shelves of the food closet which had glass 
doors. “But did we ought to take it, Dick?” 
In her excitement Janet wasn’t talking exactly 
right, but it didn’t matter much. 

“Sure we can take it,” declared her brother. 


126 


Two Wild Cherries 


“If we can’t get out to go home to our own sup¬ 
per, we got to eat the Gipsy’s supper. I guess 
they won’t care.” 

“If they do,” said Janet, “we can tell ’em, 
when we get out, that daddy will pay them.” 

“Sure,” said Dick. 

“We could even cook if we wanted to,” added 
Janet, looking at the oil stove. 

“No, I guess we better not do that,” Dick 
said. “We might set fire to the wagon.” 

“Yes,” Janet nodded, “that’s so. Well, we 
can make believe we’re on another picnic. Let’s 
see what there is to eat, Dick.” 

The children rummaged through the wall cup¬ 
board, which was neatly kept. They found 
some boxes of crackers, some of cookies, a piece 
of cheese and a little smoked beef in a glass 
jar. 

“This will make a fine picnic lunch,” said 
Dick. “We can make believe we’re ship¬ 
wrecked on a desert island.” 

“Is there anything to drink on the desert is¬ 
land?” asked Janet, laughing as she ate some of 
the crackers and smoked beef. “This is salty 
and I’m thirsty,” she added. The children 
were feeling better now. 


Gipsy Life 


127 


Dick looked about the kitchen and saw a cov¬ 
ered jar. Taking off the lid he found in it 
fresh water, and gave Janet a glassful. Then 
he drank some himself. 

“Now it’s just like a real picnic, ’ceptin’, 
maybe, we ought to have lemonade/’ said Janet 
with a happy little sigh. She was not at all 
frightened now. 

“I could make lemonade if I had lemons,” 
said Dick. “There’s sugar in that box,” and he 
pointed to one so marked. 

“Oh, well,” laughed his sister, “we’ll make 
believe this water is lemonade,” and she took 
another sip. “It’s real sweet!” she went on. 

“Mine’s kinder sour!” chuckled Dick, enter¬ 
ing into the spirit of the fun of “make believe.” 

The children ate as good a meal as they could 
on what they found in the red van. 

“It’s living just like the Gipsies; isn’t it?” 
asked Dick, sighing contentedly. 

“Yes,” agreed Janet. “But it’s getting dark, 
and I don’t want to stay here all night—with¬ 
out mother and—” 

Her voice once more sounded as though she 
might cry. 

“We’ll get out of here pretty soon,” declared 


128 


Two Wild Cherries 


her brother. “When the wagon stops then it 
won’t make so much noise and we can holler a 
lot more, and pound and kick on the door and 
they’ll let us out.” 

“That’ll be good,” sighed Janet. “I want to 
sleep in my own little bed at home, but these 
little beds are nice,” and she looked toward the 
bunks in front. “It’s getting real dark,” she 
went on. “I don’t like the dark.” 

“I guess maybe I could light the lamp,” of¬ 
fered Dick, for there was a brass hanging- 
lamp in the kitchen. “Once I lighted a lamp in 
our house for Jane, when the electric lights 
went out.” 

“Has you got any matches?” asked Janet. 

“No, but maybe there’s some in a box near 
the stove, like where Jane keeps hers,” said the 
little boy. 

He looked, and, surely enough, found some 
matches. As he said, he once lighted a lamp 
for Jane, the cook, and now he very carefully 
struck a match and touched it to the wick of 
the oil lamp after Janet had helped him raise 
the glass chimney. 

A moment later the soft, mellow glow of the 
lamp filled the Gipsy van, and Janet felt hap- 


Gipsy Life 


129 


pier, for the dark seemed to bring many fears. 

“Now we’re like real Gipsies,” chuckled 
Dick. “But if I could get that door open—” 
He stopped suddenly, for he and Janet heard 
loud voices outside, and, a second later, the red 
van stopped with such a jerk that the children 
nearly fell off their chairs. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE SEARCH 

About the middle of the afternoon, when the 
game of hide-and-go-seek began, Grandma 
Cherry, who had been doing some mending for 
Janet and Dick, said to Mrs. Cherry. 

“I think I’ll go out and walk around the side 
porch. I might just happen to see my lost 
cameo pin.” 

“Oh, dear! I’m so sorry about that!” said 
Mrs. Cherry. “I’m afraid you will never find 
it.” 

“Oh, I might,” and Grandma smiled cheer¬ 
fully. “I think it came loose from Janet’s 
dress, fell on the porch and rolled off. It may 
be somewhere in the grass. I know we have 
looked everywhere for it, but I might just hap¬ 
pen to see it this time.” 

“I hope you do,” sighed Janet’s mother. 
“Anyhow it will do you good to go out in the 
air a bit after sewing so steadily.” 

So Grandma walked out on the side porch, 
130 


The Search 


131 

and around in the grass near it. But even with 
her strongest glasses, which she used for read¬ 
ing and sewing, she could not see the gleam of 
the gold and cameo pin—the beautiful cameo 
carved from a sea shell. 

“I guess it is gone forever,” she gently 
sighed. “Poor little Janet! I mustn’t make 
her feel sad about it, though.” Going into the 
house Grandma asked: “Where are my two 
Wild Cherries? Isn’t it about time they came 
home to get ready for supper?” 

“Why, so it is!” exclaimed Mrs. Cherry, 
looking at the clock. “I had no idea it was so 
late! They ought to be coming along now. 
They went to the woods, just this side of the 
cranberry bog, to play games with the other 
children.” 

“The cranberry bog!” exclaimed Grandma 
Cherry. “Isn’t that where the Gipsies camp?” 

“Near there, yes. But I have told Janet and 
Dick to keep away from the camp. Not that 
the Gipsies would harm the children, but it is 
just as well for them not to go there. After 
our talk with the fortune-teller the other day, 
I think Janet and Dick know that the poor Gipsy 
boy didn’t take your pin.” 


132 


Two Wild Cherries 


“I hope he didn’t,” said Grandma, blinking 
behind her glasses. 

Mrs. Cherry went out to look up and 
down the street for a sign of her children. 
When they went to the woods they gener¬ 
ally came home by a short cut across the 
fields. But neither Janet nor Dick was in sight 
now. 

However Mrs. Cherry did see Jim Blake 
walking slowly along, and she called to him, 
asking: 

“Have you seen Janet and Dick?” 

“Yes’m, they were playing hide-and-go-seek 
with us in the woods,” Jim answered. “I was 
blinding and they ran off and hid. But they 
wouldn’t come in when I hollered ‘givie up,’ so 
we played without them.” 

“And didn’t they come, later, back to join 
in the game?” asked Mrs. Cherry. 

“No’m, they didn’t. We played quite a 
while after that and they didn’t come back. I 
guess they found a good place to hide and they 
stayed in it. I couldn’t find ’em, and neither 
could anybody else.” 

“They shouldn’t stay away hiding like that,” 
spoke Mrs. Cherry. “If you see them, Jim, 


The Search 


133 

please tell them to come home. It will soon 
be supper time.” 

‘Til be glad of it!” laughed the boy. 
“Yes’m, I’ll tell Janet and Dick if I see ’em.” 

He walked on, whistling, and Mrs. Cherry 
went back in the house. 

“Where are the children?” asked Grandma 
Cherry. 

“Oh, off playing somewhere in the woods. 
It would be just like my Wild Cherries to for¬ 
get all about the hide-and-go-seek game and 
start something make-believe of their own. 
They’ll be along pretty soon, I guess. When 
they get hungry it’s better for them than an 
alarm clock.” 

“I’ll make them some cookies,” offered 
Grandma, as she started for the kitchen. 
“That cook of yours doesn’t know how to make 
cookies for children, though she’s good in lots 
of other ways. I’ll make some of my old- 
fashioned cookies.” 

Grandma Cherry and Mrs. Cherry were busy 
about the house for some time after this before 
either of them thought of again looking at the 
clock. And when they did, the hands pointed 
to five. 


134 


Two Wild Cherries 


“My goodness! Those children should be 
here now!” exclaimed Mrs. Cherry. “I won¬ 
der what’s keeping them.” 

She went to the door to look out, and 
Grandma followed, but there was no sign of 
Janet and Dick. However Lulu Wilson was 
just coming back from the store where she had 
gone to buy a yeast cake. 

“Oh, Lulu, did you see Janet and Dick?” 
asked their mother. 

“Not since they went away to play hide-and- 
coop,” answered Lulu. Sometimes the game of 
hide-and-go-seek was called “hide-and-coop,” 
because sometimes those who hid themselves 
used to let it be known they were safely stowed 
away by calling: “Coop!” 

“Just where were you playing?” asked Mrs. 
Cherry. “I’m afraid I’ll have to send after 
them.” 

“It was right in the woods, near the big 
stump and the spring where we have picnics,” 
said Lulu. 

“Oh, I know where you mean,” Mrs. Cherry 
replied. “I’ll send Jerry there. Oh, Jerry,” 
she called to the hired man who was working 
in the garden, “will you please go to the picnic 


The Search 


135 


stump and call Janet and Dick to supper? 
They must be playing some game and have for¬ 
gotten about coming home.” 

"Just like these Wild Cherries!” chuckled 
Jerry, but he did not mind walking to the 
woods, for his back ached from pulling out 
weeds. 

Supper was nearly ready, and Grandma had 
taken from the oven a plate of her famous cook-*, 
ies, but still the children had not come home, 
and the afternoon shadows were growing 
longer as the sun went down in the West. 
Then Grandma saw Jerry coming back across 
the lots. 

"But the children aren’t with him,” she said. 

"They aren’t?” exclaimed Mrs. Cherry. 
"Those little tykes! I wonder where they can 
have gone?” 

Jerry stalked up to the door, shaking his head. 

"I looked all around the picnic ground, Mrs. 
Cherry,” he reported, "but there wasn’t a sign 
of Janet or Dick.” 

"Did you call ?” asked Grandma. 

"Yes’m, I did, and real loud, too. But they 
didn’t answer.” 

"They must have gone to another part of the 


136 


Two Wild Cherries 


woods, and are coming home some other way,” 
decided Mrs. Cherry. She was not anxious yet 
—though she felt she would be pretty soon, if 
the children didn't arrive. 

Mr. Cherry came in from the store, greeting 
his wife and mother. 

“Well, where are my wild ones?” he asked, 
looking about. 

“Off in the woods somewhere,” his wife an¬ 
swered. “It isn't the first time they have been 
late for supper. I'm afraid you'll have to scold 
them a little, Robert.” 

“I think so, myself,” he agreed. “Maybe I'd 
better go take a look," he added. “I know 
where that picnic stump is.” 

“Oh, dear! Supper will be spoiled!” his wife 
sighed. 

Mr. Cherry hurried to the woods and looked 
about in places where he knew Dick and Janet 
had played in times past. He even went to the 
“pirate cave,” where Dick had been caught by 
the foot, but the children were not there. 

Nor did the shouts of Mr. Cherry bring any 
answer. 

“I wonder if those children could have gone 
to the Gipsy camp?” thought their father. “I 


The Search 


137 


told them not to, still, they may have imagined 
they had a good reason. But if I go there now, 
looking for them, they’ll be worried at home 
because I don’t come back. My goodness! 
Wild Cherries is certainly a good name for 
those tykes!” 

Mr. Cherry hurried back to the house. 

“Oh, didn’t you find them?” his wife asked, 
showing the disappointment she felt. 

“No, they weren’t there,” he answered. “I 
think they may have gone to the Gipsy camp.” 

“Oh, they wouldn’t!” his wife exclaimed. 
“They wouldn’t do that!” 

“They might. Anyhow I’m going there to 
inquire. I’ll go in the auto by the road. It’s 
a little longer, but if Dick and Janet are there 
I can bring them home with me. They’ll be 
tired.” 

“Won’t you have supper first?” asked 
Grandma Cherry. 

“No, not until I find those children. It 
won’t take me long.” 

Calling Jerry to bring around the automobile, 
Mr. Cherry was soon ready to set off 
for the Gipsy camp in search of the two 
lost children. 


CHAPTER XIV 


IN THE WOODS 

For a time Mr. Cherry and Jerry, the hired 
man, drove along in the auto toward the cran¬ 
berry bog without speaking. It was fast get¬ 
ting dark and Mr. Cherry was more worried 
than he had told anyone—even his wife. At 
last Jerry spoke, saying: 

“Maybe Dick and Janet stayed to supper 
with the Gipsies.” 

“Oh, I hardly think they would do that,” said 
their father. 

“They might, if they were hungry,” went on 
Jerry. “Or maybe those Gipsies are keeping 
the children there.” 

“They wouldn’t do that—Gipsies don’t kid¬ 
nap children—those are all silly stories,” said 
the father of the two Wild Cherries. 

“Um,” was all Jerry answered. He had his 
own opinion about Gipsies—right or wrong. 

It did not take long for the swift automobile 
138 


In the Woods 


i39 


to reach the cranberry bog, and from there it 
was but a short run to the Gipsy camp. Gath¬ 
ered about the tents and wagons were the dark- 
skinned men and women, also the boys and 
girls. The snapping, black or dark brown eyes 
of the Gipsies gleamed in the light of several 
fires that were blazing, and their white teeth 
glistened in the flickering flames. 

As Mr. Cherry and Jerry leaped from the 
car and walked into the camp, some of the dogs 
began to bark. They barked, it seemed, at 
strangers after dark, though not in the day¬ 
time. 

“Quiet, Zeppa! Down, Gar! Quiet!” 
called a Gipsy man, and the dogs stopped their 
barks and growls. 

“Are my children here?” exclaimed Mr. 
Cherry as he stalked into the circle of firelight 
near where a big kettle was steaming on three 
poles straddling over a blaze. “I mean Dick 
and Janet,” he went on, as he looked about at 
the Gipsies. 

“There are no children here but our own,” 
said one of the men in a quiet voice. He took 
from his mouth a short, black pipe as he spoke, 
and blew a cloud of smoke into the air. 


140 Two Wild Cherries 

“You know whom I mean/’ went on Mr. 
Cherry as he caught sight of a woman coming 
from a tent on which was a sign “fortune- 
teller. ,, The woman smiled, showing her white 
teeth. 

“Yes, I know,” she said in a soft voice. 
“You are the father of Dick and Janet—the 
two Wild Cherries. I know—they came to my 
tent about the cameo pin, with you and your 
wife. Nice children they are, even if they are 
wild,” and she laughed a little. 

“But are they here?” demanded Mr. Cherry. 
“We can’t find them—they went off in the 
woods to play—near here I guess—and they 
haven’t come home.” 

“Your children are not here,” answered Ma¬ 
dame Deborah quietly. “I tell you the truth, 
sir, they are not here. You are a wise man— 
you know that the silly stories people tell about 
Gipsies are false—we do not harm children, or 
take them away. And we have not seen your 
boy or girl. Do I not speak the truth?” she 
asked, turning to the circle of Gipsies about 
her, and saying something in their own lan¬ 
guage. 

“Yes! Yes! They are not here!” mur- 


In the Woods 


141 

mured several of the men and women, speaking 
in English. 

“Well, where in the world can they be?” 
murmured Mr. Cherry, and he seemed to feel a 
chill of fear in his heart. “Where can Janet 
and Dick have gone?” 

“Tell me about it!” urged Madame Deborah. 
“Perhaps I can help.” 

“You can't find them by fortune-telling!” ex¬ 
claimed Mr. Cherry. “I don't believe in such 
stuff!” 

“I know—you are a wise man,” laughed the 
Gipsy woman. “But maybe I am wise also— 
in my own way. Tell me where the children 
were last seen.” 

Mr. Cherry related how Janet and Dick had 
gone to the woods to play, but had not come 
home with the other children—nor had they 
been seen since they went to the first hiding 
place. 

Listening to all this, Madame Deborah 
seemed to think for a minute. Then she talked 
to some of the other Gipsies in their own lan¬ 
guage, and waited for them to speak. .Sud¬ 
denly one of the men uttered a cry as if he had 
unexpectedly remembered something, and Mr. 


142 Two Wild Cherries 

Cherry heard the name Kobah spoken several 
times. 

Then Madame Deborah raised her hand for 
silence and, turning to Mr. Cherry, she spoke. 

“It may be that your children have followed 
Kobah,” she said. 

“Who is Kobah ?” asked Mr. Cherry, won- 
deringly. 

“He is one of our men,” answered the 
fortune-teller. “But he has gone to visit an¬ 
other tribe in his wagon. He left his wagon 
off in the woods, not far from where you say 
your children went to play. Just before dark 
Kobah went with his horses to the woods, 
hitched them to his wagon and drove away to 
the other tribe. It may be that your children, 
seeing the wagon go through the woods, fol¬ 
lowed it.” 

“Do you mean that Kobah would take them 
for a ride?” asked Mr. Cherry. 

“It may be that he would,” answered Ma¬ 
dame Deborah. “Kobah is kind and loves 
children.” 

“And it would be just like my Wild Cherries 
to ask for a ride in a Gipsy wagon,” said Mr. 
Cherry with a little smile. “They would not 


In the Woods 


i 43 


think that was any harm, as long as they kept 
away from the camp as I told them to. But 
they would not ride this long,” he said. “They 
would ask Kobah to set them down or take them 
home before this, I am sure.” 

“It would be of little use for them to ask Ko¬ 
bah,” said the fortune-teller. “He is very deaf 
—he hears hardly at all, and he does not talk or 
understand English. So it may be that the 
Wild Cherries are following after the red and 
yellow wagon of Kobah.” 

“Yes, I think that's what they may have 
done,” agreed Mr. Cherry. “Well, I can fol¬ 
low him, and catch up to him for my auto will 
go faster than his horses. But which road 
did he take? Where is the other camp of 
Gipsies where he was going?” 

“Zut will show you the way—Zut will 
ride with you,” and Madame Deborah motioned 
to one of the younger Gipsy men, speaking to 
him rapidly in his own tongue. He nodded 
and smiled in answer. 

“I go with you in your car and show you,” 
he said to Mr. Cherry. 

“Well,” remarked Jerry in a low voice as 
they started back toward the automobile, “I 


144 


Two Wild Cherries 


never thought I’d be ridin’ with a Gipsy.” 

“I think we shall soon find the children,” 
said Mr. Cherry to the hired man. “They 
thought, very likely, it would be lots of fun to 
follow that one red wagon.” 

“Maybe they hitched on behind,” suggested 
Jerry. 

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” admitted the 
father of the two Wild Cherries. 

Once more they were in the auto on their 
way through the woods, searching for the lost 
ones. 

But meanwhile, Dick and Janet were getting 
into more trouble. 

You remember that after they had eaten in 
the Gipsy wagon, they lighted the brass hang¬ 
ing lamp, and, soon after that the wagon 
stopped with a sudden jerk and there were loud 
shoutings in the dark woods near them. 

“Oh, Dick!” cried Janet, “what you s’pose 
it is?” 

“I don’t know,” the boy answered, “Lessen 
maybe it’s robbers stopping the Gipsy man 
who’s driving this wagon.” 

“Oh—robbers!” gasped Janet. 

“I only said maybe,” spoke Dick. “Listen 1” 


In the Woods 


145 


They could hear the murmur of voices, and 
then it seemed some one gave a cry of surprise. 
At the same moment Janet caught Dick by the 
arm and pointed to the back door of the van, 
exclaiming: 

‘Took! It’s open!” 

Surely enough, it was. The door swung 
freely to and fro, letting out a flood of yellow 
light into the dark woods. There seemed to 
be no one at the rear of the Gipsy wagon—the 
talking and voices now all sounded up at the 
front end. 

“We can get out, Dick!” whispered Janet. 
"Let's run away!” 

"Yes—we can get out!" he whispered back. 

Hand in hand the children stole on tiptoe 
to the back door of the van. Quietly, and 
making hardly any more noise than two little 
mice would have made, they crept down the few 
steps. A moment later they were running 
along through the woods—running along a 
rough wagon road, filled with ruts and holes. 
It was because the wagon wheels went into 
one of these ruts that it had stopped so 
suddenly and with such a jolt. 

"It—it's terrible dark!” whispered Janet as 


146 


Two Wild Cherries 


she clasped Dick’s hand more tightly and ran 
along with him, slipping and stumbling. They 
were out of the glow of light cast by the lamp 
they had lighted—light that gleamed from the 
open door of the van. “I don’t like it so dark,” 
said Janet. 

“It won’t be dark very long,” said Dick, 
bravely and hopefully. “The moon is coming 
up—look!” 

He pointed off through the trees to where a 
silver glow showed. It was the full moon com¬ 
ing up. 

“Oh, I like moonlight,” said Janet, and she 
was no longer afraid. 

Behind them there suddenly burst out the 
loud voices of men—and it seemed that they 
were surprised about something. 

“Maybe they have looked in the wagon and 
they don’t see us,” suggested Janet. “Maybe 
they’re mad ’cause we ran away.” 

“Maybe,” agreed Dick. “Let’s run faster!” 

They were in a more open part of the road 
now, and the moon gave a very good light so 
they could see to run better. On they hurried 
through the woods, leaving behind them the 


In the Woods 


147 

Gipsy van. The shouts only sounded faintly 
now. 

‘‘We’ll soon be home,” said Dick to his sister. 

“I—I guess mother and daddy and grandma 
will be worried,” said Janet. 

“I guess they will,” spoke Dick. “But we 
couldn’t help it. We didn’t mean to get shut 
up in the Gipsy wagon.” 

“What you s’pose made ’em open the door if 
they didn’t want us to get out ?” asked Janet. 

“I don’t know,” her brother said. “Maybe 
the door flew open by itself, same as it slammed 
shut.” 

“Maybe,” murmured Janet. 

They hurried along under the green trees of 
the forest—trees that were now turned to silver 
by the bright moon. 

Suddenly Janet gave such a start that she 
nearly pulled her hand from Dick’s warm 
grasp. 

“What’s the matter?” he asked. 

“Did you—did you hear that noise?” whis¬ 
pered his sister. “Listen, Dick!” 

To the ears of the children came a low, 
growling sound. 


CHAPTER XV 


FOUND AT LAST 

Janet would have turned and run back 
through the woods, toward the Gipsy wagon, 
but Dick held her firmly by the hand. 

“Don't be scared," he said. 

“But that growl, Dick! Maybe it's a bear!" 

“Pooh! There aren't any bears here, I told 
you!" he said. “It's only a dog—or some¬ 
thing." 

Janet's heart was wildly beating and, even 
though Dick had told his sister not to be fright¬ 
ened he was feeling a bit that way himself. 
Anxiously the little girl and boy stared ahead 
at the road that stretched before them winding 
through the woods. It showed brightly and 
plainly in the moonlight. 

Suddenly some animal darted out of the un¬ 
derbrush, paused for a moment to look at the 
children and then ran on again, more swiftly 
than at first. 


148 


Found at Last 


149 


“Oh, Dick! Look!” murmured Janet. 

“Yes, it’s nothing but a fox !” said the boy. 
“I thought it was only a fox or a dog. 
That’s nothing to be scared of. Come on.” 

“Won’t the fox jump out at us?” asked 
Janet. 

“Course not,” declared Dick. “Come on!” 

Once more they kept on through the woods, 
along the old road. This road did not seem 
to be traveled much, for grass grew in the mid¬ 
dle and the ruts where the wagon wheels rolled 
were filled with deep holes in some places and 
made bumpy by high stones in other spots. 

“Do you think this road will take us home ?” 
asked Janet after a while. 

“Sure it will,” said Dick, though how he 
could be so certain he did not tell. 

The moon was now well up in the sky, giving 
a fine light, and the children could see very 
plainly. It was not half so scary being in a 
moon-glowing woods like this as it would have 
been in a dark, gloomy forest. 

Suddenly, as Dick and Janet made a turn in 
the old road, they saw shining at them, a little 
way off, two bright spots of light. The spots 
of light flickered and gleamed. 


150 Two Wild Cherries 

“Look! Look!” whispered Janet. “Are 
those the eyes of the fox?” 

“No. They’re too big for the eyes of the 
fox,” answered Dick. He and Janet had often 
seen the eyes of their cat glisten in the dark 
when a light reflected on them, but they had 
never seen such big gleams as these from the 
eyes of any pussy. 

“Maybe—maybe it’s a bear,” whispered the 
little girl. She pressed closer to her brother. 

“There aren’t any bears here, I tell you!” 
said Dick. 

The spots of light became bigger and 
brighter. They drew nearer, coming along the 
road. And then Dick gave a cry: 

“It’s an automobile!” he shouted. “It’s an 
auto, Janet, and maybe they’ll give us a ride 
home!” 

“Oh, goodie!” exclaimed Janet. 

Nearer came the lights. Now the children 
stood still plainly showing in the gleam of the 
auto headlights. And then a welcome voice 
cried : 

“Dick! Janet!” 

“Oh, it’s daddy! It’s daddy!” shouted the 
children. 


Found at Last 


151 

A moment later they were in their father's 
arms, and Janet could not help crying a little 
because she was so glad. 

“Well, we found you; didn't we?” asked 
Jerry as he walked up beside Mr. Cherry, leav¬ 
ing the throbbing auto a little distance down the 
road, its headlights brightly gleaming, like 
some animal's eyes. 

“Did you come after us?" asked Dick. 

“Of course we did," said his father. “But 
where in the world have you been?" 

“In the Gipsy wagon," Dick replied. 

“Did you follow it off through the woods?" 
Jerry wanted to know. 

“We went inside to see what it looked like," 
explained Dick. “Then we got in the little 
beds and we fell asleep. And somebody came 
and hitched a horse to the wagon and drove 
off." 

“And they locked us in," added Janet, “so 
we couldn't get out." 

“Well, how did you get out now?" his father 
inquired. 

“The wagon bumped over a big stone, I 
guess," Dick explained, “and the door opened." 

“Then we went out," and Janet took up the 


152 


Two Wild Cherries 


story, “but we had something to eat before that, 
and Dick lighted the lamp and there was a lot 
of men talking loud.” 

“Where is the Gipsy wagon now?” asked Mr. 
Cherry. 

“Back there,” and Dick pointed to the road 
behind them. 

“Is Kobah there?” inquired Zut, who had 
ridden with Mr. Cherry and Jerry as a guide 
through the woods. 

“Who is Kobah?” asked Dick. 

“He owns the Gipsy wagon you rode in,” 
explained Mr. Cherry. 

“We didn’t see anybody,” remarked Dick, 
“and we couldn’t make anybody hear. But we 
pounded and kicked and—” 

“We hollered, too,” broke in Janet. 

“Kobah—he very deaf—like a dead tree,” 
said Zut, slowly. 

“Well, I’m glad I have you two little tykes 
back,” spoke Mr. Cherry. “And while we are 
at it I suppose we may as well ride on a little 
way and tell Kobah what happened. I guess 
he will be surprised to find that you have made 
a meal in his wagon.” 

“And we slept in his beds, too,” said Dick. 


Found at Last 153 

“But I thought you could pay him if he wanted 
money.” 

“Yes,” laughed his father. “We’ll see about 
that. But we must hurry home so mother and 
grandma won’t worry. You shouldn’t have 
gotten in the wagon, children. We didn't 
know where you were.” 

“We didn’t know, either,” and Janet laughed 
in a happy care-free manner. 

It was only a short ride in the auto to where 
the Gipsy wagon still stood. One of the wheels 
had gone down in a deep rut which had caused 
the heavy jolt. And the shouting and loud 
voices was caused when Kobah saw some of his 
Gipsy friends who were coming to meet him. 

Kobah had been much surprised to see the 
lamp lighted in his wagon which he had sup¬ 
posed was empty. He and his Gipsy friends 
looked in, after the door flew open and Dick 
and Janet slipped out. The Gipsies saw the 
remains of the children’s meal, and also noticed 
the tumbled beds and they did not know what 
to think. 

Mr. Cherry, and those with him in the auto, 
found some puzzled Gipsies gathered about the 
red wagon. There was some rapid talk—loud 


154 Two Wild Cherries 

talk to make deaf Kobah hear—and then Zut 
explained matters. 

Kobah had planned to go on a visit in his 
traveling wagon to some other Gipsy tribe. 
He left his wagon off by itself in the woods 
where Dick and Janet came upon it while they 
were looking for a good place to hide. What 
happened to the children I have told you. 

“But Kobah he not know any children in his 
wagon,” explained Zut to whom the Gipsy 
talked in his own tongue. “He not know they 
are there at all. He not lock door, either. 
Door he slam shut all by himself and he lock— 
catch on outside you know.” 

“Yes, I guess it could happen that way,” 
agreed Mr. Cherry. 

“Then wagon—he go bimp-bump,” went on 
Zut, “and door he fly open. Kobah see light 
come out back door no can tell what make do. 
So he holler and other Gipsies come to meet 
him. Nobody in wagon when they look—no 
can tell what do.” 

“Yes, I reckon it was a puzzle,” chuckled 
Jerry. “Two Wild Cherries all right!” and he 
looked at Janet and Dick, who were almost fall¬ 
ing asleep on the rear seat of the auto. 


Found at Last 


155 


“Everything all right now,” went on Zut. 
“Kobah he say him sorry children get scared— 
he never hurt children—he love 'em! He say 
all right about crackers and what they eat." 

“Well, give him this," and Mr. Cherry 
handed Zut a dollar to give the old Gipsy who 
grinned his delight and muttered something in 
his own language. 

“And now for home!" cried the father of 
Janet and Dick. “I am afraid mother and 
grandma will be very much worried. I would 
telephone them that you're all right, if I could 
find a place. Don’t ever do anything like this 
again, children." 

“No, sir, we won’t!’’ promised the two Wild 
Cherries. 

Leaving Kobah and his friends to get the 
wagon out of the rut, it was only a short run 
back to the Gipsy camp where Zut was left, and 
Madame Deborah smiled a white-teeth welcome 
to the children who could hardly keep their eyes 
open. 

“I am glad you are found," she said. “I felt 
you would be. But you shall have many more 
adventures yet." 

“I think they will," chuckled Mr. Cherry. 


156 Two Wild Cherries 

“Bed will be their next stopping place,” said 
Jerry. 

Quickly the automobile made the trip from 
the cranberry bog back to the Cherry home. 

“Oh, you little rascals!” said their mother, as 
she kissed Dick and Janet. 

“Poor dears!” murmured Grandma Cherry. 
“Wild Cherries in very truth!” 

“We didn’t—now we didn’t find your cameo 
pin, Grandma,” murmured Janet. 

“Oh, don’t think any more about it,” advised 
the old lady. “We were so worried about 
you!” 

Then Dick and his sister were hurried up to 
bed. 

You can well imagine how the boy and girl 
playmates flocked about the two Wild Cherries 
next day to hear all about their adventure. 
For the news had spread how Janet and Dick 
had ridden off in the Gipsy wagon. 

One story was that the two children had been 
kidnapped by the dark-skinned people, Janet to 
be taken away to be a Gipsy Queen while Dick 
was to be made a King when he grew up. 

Of course such stories were silly, but some 
people believed them, and Ted Wharton, who 


Found at Last 


157 


was a great reader of fairy books, was quite 
disappointed when he learned Dick and Janet 
had come back safe and sound. 

“The Gipsies are real nice,’' said Janet, tell¬ 
ing her share in the story. “I like that old 
Kobah.” 

“If he hadn’t been so deaf he could have 
heard us knocking and hollering,” spoke Dick, 
“and then he would have let us out.” 

“I’d like to ride off in a Gipsy wagon,” mur¬ 
mured Henry Merton. 

“So would I!” agreed Jim Blake and Sam 
Ward. 

And then Dick and Janet had to go into more 
details about their strange trip. 

Happy days of vacation time followed each 
other swiftly for the Cherry children and their 
chums. They played in the woods and fields. 
Then came almost a week of rain when 
they could not go out of doors. But Dick and 
Janet had fun in the house or barn. Some¬ 
times Grandma Cherry told them wonderful 
stories. 

At last the rain stopped and the sun smiled 
warm and bright once more. Out of doors 
rushed the little boy and girl. 


158 Two Wild Cherries 

“Oh, look how big the duck pond is!” cried 
Janet. “It’s like a lake!” 

Dick gazed at it a moment and then he had 
one of his sudden ideas. 

“Come on, Janet!” he cried. “I know some¬ 
thing wonderful we can do! Just wonderful!” 


CHAPTER XVI 


ON THE RAFT 

Janet followed Dick around the edge of the 
duck pond which held more water, on account 
of the rain, than had been in it for many 
months. The brook running into the pond was 
now like a little river. 

“Where you going?” Janet asked. 

“Come on—IT1 show you! Oh, this is going 
to be wonderful!” cried her brother. 

At one end of the duck pond, farthest from 
the house, was a pile of fence rails, old boxes 
and other wood that Jerry cut up for kindling 
from time to time. He had not done any cut¬ 
ting for several weeks and there was much 
wood in the pile—including some boxes that 
Mr. Cherry had sent down from the hardware 
store. 

“Help me get out some of the big pieces of 
wood, Janet,” directed Dick. 

“What you going to do?” she wanted to 
159 


160 Two Wild Cherries 

know. “Are you going to make a house ?” 

“I’m going to make a raft, and we’re going 
sailing on the duck pond,” Dick answered. 
“It’ll be lots of fun!” 

“What’s a raft?” Janet wanted to know as 
she helped her brother pull out some long pieces 
of wood. 

“It’s like a boat,” explained Dick, “only it’s 
flat. You put it in the water and ride on it. 
We’ll put some boxes on our raft and make 
believe they’re a cabin on a big ship and we’ll 
go sailing and land on a desert island and play 
Robinson Crusoe!” 

Dick was almost out of breath when he 
finished, partly from talking so fast and partly 
from pulling on the boards, and long, thin 
pieces of wood, to get them loose from the pile. 

“Can I ride on the raft?” Janet wanted to 
know. 

“Sure you can—we’ll both ride. Now help 
me pull out this long pole.” 

“What’s that for?” the little girl inquired. 
“Are we going to put up a clothes line on the 
desert island, and is this a clothes pole ?” 

“No, it’s a pole so we can push the raft 
around in the duck pond,” Dick answered. 


On the Raft 


161 

“Maybe I can put up a sail on it—I don't know 
—but, anyhow, we can push it around with a 
pole.” 

"I know what would make a good sail,” 
spoke Janet. 

“What?” asked Dick. 

“An umbrella. You could open it and hold 
it out and the wind would blow on it and sail 
the raft. Once I had an umbrella and the wind 
blew it out of my hands,” said Janet. 

“Oh, yes! I remember!” laughed Dick. 
“An umbrella will make a good sail.” 

“But first we got to make the raft,” de¬ 
cided Janet, wisely enough. 

“That's right!” agreed her brother. “I got 
to get a hammer and some nails and some pieces 
of rope, like clothes line, to fasten the raft to¬ 
gether. You go get the line and I'll get the 
hammer and nails.” 

A little later Jane, who was cooking in the 
kitchen, heard Janet asking her: 

“Please, Jane, where's the clothes line?” 

“Oh, you don't want the big clothes line to 
hang up your doll's washed things on,” ob¬ 
jected Jane with a laugh, “I'll give you a piece 
of string.” 


162 Two Wild Cherries 

‘Tm not going to hang up doll clothes/’ re¬ 
marked Janet. 

“What are you going to do, then?” 

“Dick wants the line for something. Where 
is it, please?” 

“Down in the laundry. But Dick had better 
not try to play Wild West and lasso you like 
he did once. He might hurt you. You two 
Cherries are wild enough without playing 
cowboy.” 

“We aren’t going to play cowboy,” Janet 
answered, as she started for the laundry. 

“What are you going to play?” asked Jane, 
for Mrs. Cherry had gone out with Grandma, 
and the cook felt she must look after the chil¬ 
dren. But before Janet could tell about the 
raft, Jane smelled something burning in the 
oven of the stove. 

“Oh, my cake!” she cried, and she was so 
excited about this that she gave no further 
thought to Janet who went to the laundry and 
got the clothes line. 

Meanwhile Dick had found a box of nails 
and a hammer in the combined barn and garage 
where Jerry kept them, and when Janet re¬ 
turned to her brother with the rope, she found 


On the Raft 163 

him nailing some boards on some long pieces 
of wood. 

“Here’s the rope,” remarked Janet, who was 
trailing it on the ground after her, like a long, 
thin tail. 

“Thanks,” spoke Dick, who was almost too 
busy to look up. “Now you tie some of these 
boards to the long cross pieces, and leave 
enough of the rope for an anchor.” 

“Where we going to anchor?” asked Janet 
as she began her share of the work. 

“We’re going to anchor on the desert island,” 
answered her brother. 

“Oh,” murmured the little girl. “Will there 
be anything to eat on the desert island—any 
bananas or oranges or cocoanuts?” 

“Maybe,” Dick replied, “and maybe not, I 
guess we better take something with us.” 

“I’ll get some cookies from Jane,” offered 
Janet. “They’re not as good as Grandma’s, 
but we can eat ’em I guess. You better tie the 
rope on, Dick, ’cause you can do it better’n 
what I can.” 

“All right,” the little boy said. “Ouch!” he 
suddenly cried. 

“What’s the matter?” asked Janet. 


164 


Two Wild Cherries 


“I hit my thumb with the hammer.” 

“What for?” 

“Well, I didn’t do it for fun!” mumbled Dick 
for he had his thumb in his mouth now. “I 
bumpmp—boo—hub t—bub—be—bail. ’ ’ 

“Oh, you mean you went to hit the nail ?” and 
Janet tried not to laugh at Dick’s funny talk 
when his mouth was more than half filled by 
his injured thumb. 

“Um,” he murmured. Then as, like little 
Jack Horner he took out his thumb, he said: 
“Go on get the cookies. I’ll finish the raft.” 

Jane had been so quick in taking her cake 
out of the oven that it had only burned the 
least bit—not enough to harm it—and she was 
feeling good-natured when Janet again entered 
the kitchen. 

“Well, what is it now, little Wild Cherry?” 
asked Jane, smiling. 

“Please may Dick and I have something to 
eat?” begged Janet. “I don’t mean something 
to eat here” she added. “We want to take our 
lunch out in a box or basket.” 

“Oh, and go off in the woods and hide in a 
Gipsy wagon again, and be lost and worry your 


On the Raft 


165 


poor mother and grandma to fits, I s’pose!” ex¬ 
claimed Jane. “No, I can’t let you do that. 
Your mother wouldn’t like it.” 

“Oh, please Jane, we aren’t going to the 
woods at all!” promised Janet. “We’re only 
down by the duck pond.” 

“Well, there’s a lot of extra water in the 
duck pond—be careful you don’t fall in,” 
warned the good-natured cook. 

“Oh, no’m, we won’t,” promised Janet. But 
she little knew what was going to happen. 
“And, please, could we have some lunch ?” she 
asked. 

“Oh, I s’pose so,” answered Jane. And she 
was so pleased that her cake—a new kind she 
had tried for the first time—wasn’t burned, 
that she put up an extra big and good lunch for 
the children. 

“Now don’t you play in the water and get 
wet,” Jane warned Janet as the little girl 
hurried off to join her brother on the bank of 
the duck pond. 

“All right,” Janet said. She didn’t really 
mean to get wet—but I haven’t come to that 
part yet. 


Two Wild Cherries 


i 66 

“I got lots of good things to eat!” Janet told 
Dick, who was still busy nailing and tying to¬ 
gether the raft. 

“That’s fine!” cried Dick. “We’ll go sail¬ 
ing pretty soon.” 

“Oh, I forgot the umbrella for a sail!” ex¬ 
claimed Janet. “I’ll go get it,” she offered. 
“Here, you go on away!” she ordered, for some 
of the ducks were swimming up toward the 
basket of lunch she had set down on the bank. 
Janet tossed little pebbles at the ducks, not to 
hit them, but to make them swim away, which 
they did. Back to the house she ran. 

“Well, what is it now?” called Jane who 
heard her enter. 

“I just want to get the old umbrella, Jane,” 
answered the little girl. 

“Yes, it will keep the sun off you, and I 
s’pose you want to pretend it’s a circus tent,” 
laughed the cook. “Well, be careful, that’s 
all I ask of you. If anything happens your 
mother will blame me.” 

“We’ll be careful,” promised Janet, and 
really she meant to—but when the raft— 

Oh, I forgot—I can’t tell you about that just 
yet. 


On the Raft 


167 

Clasping the umbrella under her arm, 
Janet hurried back to where Dick waited for 
her. 

“It's ’most finished,” said the boy, pointing 
to the raft. “I just got to put in a few more 
nails and tie on some more rope and we’ll start 
sailing.” 

“I’ll help,” offered Janet, and she did, aiding 
Dick to carry from the wood pile several empty 
packing boxes which were put on the raft. On 
these boxes the children could stand, or sit, and 
thus keep their feet out of the water—for the 
raft was not as dry as a boat would have been. 

“All aboard! Now we’ll go!” cried Dick as 
he drove in the last nail. 

“You can’t sail on dry land!” laughed Janet. 
“The raft isn’t in the water yet.” 

“I know it,” Dick answered, taking up a 
pole and putting it under the edge of the raft 
which was just at the edge of the duck pond. 
“We got to shove it into the water. Come 
on—help!” 

Janet added her weight to the pole, and after 
some hard work the children managed to thrust 
the raft off the shore and into the big pond, so 
that it floated nicely. 


168 Two Wild Cherries 

''Oh, it’s just like a real boat; isn't it?” cried 
Janet in delight. 

“Sure!” assented Dick. “All aboard!” 

He and his sister scrambled upon the raft 
which tipped a little, as both their weights came 
on one edge. 

“Oh, I'm getting my feet wet!” screamed 
Janet. 

“Get in the middle and sit on a box, or else 
take off your shoes and stockings!” directed 
Dick. “That’s what I’m going to do.” 

Janet went to the middle of the raft and there 
she found it dry enough. Only a little water 
came up through the cracks between the boards, 
but by sitting on a box Janet’s feet were lifted 
out of the dampness. 

Dick was about to push the raft off from 
shore, using a long pole when Janet gave a 
sudden cry. 

“What’s the matter?” her brother wanted to 
know. 

“We forgot the lunch basket!” gasped Janet, 
pointing to shore. 

“Hu!” grunted the boy. “Well, I’ll get it.” 

Quickly taking off his shoes and stockings he 
waded back to shore and brought off the basket 



He thrust hard on the pole and the raft floated out 
from shore. 















On the Raft 


169 

of good things to eat. But he had no sooner 
set foot on the raft, and was again about to 
push off than Janet cried: 

“Oh—look—the umbrella! I forgot that.” 

“Say!” began Dick, and then he laughed. It 
was too lovely a day, and there was so much 
fun ahead that, really, he couldn’t be cross. 
“I’ll get it,” he offered and once more he waded 
to shore. 

“Now I guess we got everything,” remarked 
the little boy as, again, he stepped on the raft. 
“Now we’ll go to the desert island and have 
fun.” 

“I don’t see any island,” spoke Janet, looking 
across the wide duck pond. 

“We can sail down the brook and maybe 
there’ll be an island there ’cause the water’s so 
high,” said Dick. “All aboard! Toot! 
Toot! Here we go!” 

He thrust hard on the pole and the raft 
floated out from shore. 

“Don’t lean over and fall in,” he told Janet, 
“ ’cause it’s deep out in the middle.” 

Before Janet could reply, a loud shout near 
the Cherry barn came to the ears of her and 
her brother. Looking back, they saw several 


170 


Two Wild Cherries 


boys running toward them, shouting and wav¬ 
ing their hands. 

“I wonder what’s the matter?” asked Janet, 
as Dick stopped pushing and let the raft slowly 
float along. “What do they want, Dick— 
those boys?” 


CHAPTER XVII 
“it's a whale” 

The boys—there were four of them—came 
to a sudden stop at the edge of the pond. Dick 
knew them all—Tom Wade, Jim Nelson, Henry 
Miller and Sid Altman. They were boys who 
were older than Dick and Dick’s special chums. 

“Hello, Dick! greeted Tom Wade. “What 
’chu doin’ ?” Tom did not always trouble him¬ 
self to say all his words correctly. 

“I’m sailing a raft,” answered Dick. 

“Give us a ride!” suggested Jim Nelson. It 
was more of an order than a polite request. 

“Yes, take us on board,” urged Henry Miller. 

“We’ll row the raft and you and your sister 
can ride,” added Sid Altman. 

“Don’t you do it, Dick,” begged Janet in a 
low voice. “They’ll upset us or something.” 

“I know they will,” replied Dick, also in a 
low voice. “I’m not going to let ’em come on 
here.” 


171 


172 


Two Wild Cherries 


He slowly pushed the raft farther out from 
shore. Seeing this the four lads cried in a 
chorus: 

“Aw, come back and give us a ride!” 

“No,” and Dick shook his head firmly. 
“This raft will only hold two. If all you fel¬ 
lows come on it’ll sink!” 

“Pooh! You can’t sink a raft!” declared 
Sid. 

“Well, you can make it tip over,” replied 
Dick. “And we don’t want to get wet.” 

“I guess he isn’t going to let us ride,” said 
Tom to his three rather rough chums. “Come 
on, let’s make a raft of our own.” 

“Too much work,” decided Jim, who was 
somewhat lazy. 

“Hi there!” called Henry Miller. “If you 
don’t come back and give us a ride, Dick, we’ll 
do something!” This sounded like a threat, 
but Dick was not afraid. He was far enough 
out in the water now so that the boys could not 
reach him. He thought they would not dare 
throw stones at him. 

“What’ll you do?” asked Dick, as he and 
Janet poled their craft still farther away. 


“It's a Whale” 


173 


“‘We’ll make a raft and we’ll ram you! 
We’ll turn pirates!” threatened Henry, “and 
sink you!” 

“Oh! If they do that!” gasped Janet. 

“Pooh, don’t be afraid,” said her brother in 
a low voice. “It will take ’em a long time to 
make a raft, and we’ll be done playing by then. 
I’m not scared of ’em!” Then, to the four 
lads on shore he called: “Go on! Make a 
raft if you want to! I don’t care!” 

“Come on! Let’s get some planks and go 
after ’em!” proposed Sid. 

“All right,” agreed Henry. “That Dick 
thinks he’s too smart, anyhow. We’ll have 
some fun with him!” 

The four turned and walked back along the 
edge of the pond. The raft, with Dick and 
Janet on it floated slowly around a bend in the 
shore, and the two Wild Cherries lost sight of 
their tormentors. 

“Now we’re all right,” said Dick. “We can 
have some fun. We’ll go to that desert island 
and have a picnic.” 

“What do you s’pose those boys will do?” 
asked his sister, a little anxiously. 


i 74 


Two Wild Cherries 


r ‘Oh, they won't do anything," he declared. 
“They're only talking. They can't find enough 
boards to make a raft." 

“I hope they don't," murmured Janet. “Oh, 
this is lots of fun," she went on, as she walked 
about on the raft, and looked at the ripples it 
made in the sunlit water of the pond. “It's 
just like a real boat!" 

“Yes, but keep in the middle if you don't want 
it to upset!" suddenly yelled Dick, for his sister 
had gone to one side and the raft tilted. 

“Oh! My feet are getting wet some more!" 
cried Janet. 

“Well, keep in the middle then," warned 
Dick. 

By doing this the raft rode along on what a 
sailor would call “an even keel," not tipping 
too much to either side. Slowly Dick and 
Janet poled themselves down stream. Looking 
back they saw no signs of the four boys and 
they hoped the quartette had gone away. 

“I guess it's 'most time to eat now," said 
Dick, after a while. 

“But we aren’t at the desert island yet," ob¬ 
jected Janet. 

“That doesn't matter," laughed her brother. 


'It's a Whale’ 


175 


“We can eat now and eat again when we get to 
the desert island—that is if we find one. 
Maybe we won’t find any island, and so we’d 
better eat now, anyhow.” 

“All right,” agreed the little girl. She was 
almost as hungry as was her brother, and just 
as ready to open the lunch basket. 

So, while the raft idly floated along the pond, 
and into a little stream which ran from it, the 
children sat on a box, dangling in the water 
their bare feet, and eating the lunch Jane had 
given them. 

“This is fun; isn’t it?” asked Dick. 

“Lots of fun!” echoed his sister. “Let’s do 
it every day.” 

“Sure we will!” Dick agreed. “But maybe 
Jane wouldn’t give us something to eat every 
day.” 

“Oh, I guess she would,” spoke Janet, more 
hopefully. 

“Well, let’s don’t eat it all now,” suggested 
Dick. “Save some until we get to the desert 
island. I’ve had enough now.” 

“So’ve I,” Janet remarked, and the lunch 
basket was put away. 

Taking the poles, the children once more sent 


Two Wild Cherries 


176 

the raft along a little more rapidly than the 
sluggish current would have taken it. They 
went around another bend and then Dick cried: 

“There’s an island!” 

“Oh, so it is!” assented Janet. “It’s a 
lovely, desert island! We can land there and 
have a picnic!” 

To tell the truth it was not much of an island 
—merely some humps of green grass growing 
in the middle of the stream which flowed out 
of the pond. It was about as large as two 
washtubs—hardly room enough for Janet and 
Dick on it at the same time. But to the Wild 
Cherries it was a real, desert island. 

“We’ll make believe orange and banana and 
cocoanut trees are growing on it,” suggested 
Janet, as the raft slowly drifted toward it. 

“And monkeys, too,” added Dick. 

“Monkeys don’t grow on trees!” scoffed 
Janet. 

“I know they don’t,” said Dick. “But they 
live in cocoanut trees, and if there’s cocoanut 
trees on that desert island there’s got to be 
monkeys.” 

“Oh, all right,” assented Janet. “I don’t 


“It’s a Whale’ 


i 77 


mind. Only I hope the monkeys in the cocoa- 
nut trees don’t throw any nuts down on us.” 

“If they’d throw bananas it would be all 
right!” laughed her brother. “Bananas are 
soft!” 

They poled the raft up to the edge of the 
island and “went ashore,” as a sailor would 
say. It was quite a tight squeeze for both of 
them to land, and when they did they -found the 
ground of the island rather damp, like a sponge, 
with water oozing up at each step they took. 

“Anyhow it’s lots of fun!” laughed Janet. 
“Now we can eat some more and pretend we’re 
shipwrecked sailors.” 

“We’re having a good time,” said Dick. 

Taking a box from the raft, Dick placed it in 
the middle of the island for him and his sister 
to sit on, as it was too damp to use the ground. 
The grass grew long and green because of the 
moisture. Seated thus Dick and his sister ate 
the remainder of the lunch they had brought 
with them. It did not take long, for they had 
eaten the greater part of the food while poling 
down the pond. 

“Well, let’s get back on the raft and ride 


i 7 8 


Two Wild Cherries 


some more,” suggested Janet after a while. 

'That's right," agreed her brother. "You 
couldn't even play tag here." 

"Not without falling off into the water," and 
Janet laughed again. 

Once more they were on the raft, slowly 
moving out and away from the little green 
island. The queer boat tilted from side to side 
as Janet or Dick moved about on it. 

"I'm tired of pushing," Janet remarked a 
little later. "Let's rest a bit." 

"All right," assented her brother, and he 
laid his pole down on the raft near where Janet 
had dropped hers. The two Wild Cherries 
stood on their home-made craft, looking about 
them. The stream flowing from the pond was 
wider at this point, so that it was a good ten 
feet to either shore, though the water was not 
very deep. 

Slowly the raft drifted along, and then it 
came to a stop. Dick was thinking of suggest¬ 
ing that they start and pole back toward home 
when he and Janet suddenly noticed that the 
raft was moving all by itself. And the strange 
part of it was that it was moving up stream, 


“It's a Whale” 179 

and against the current; not floating down as 
it had been. 

It would not have been surprising had the 
raft drifted down stream. That would have 
been natural. But now some strange and un¬ 
seen force seemed taking the raft, and the 
children on it, up along the brook. 

“Look!” cried Janet. “We're moving and 
we're not pushing!” 

Neither she nor her brother had taken up 
their pushing poles. 

“I wonder what makes us go ?” mused Dick. 

Janet looked toward the bow, or front part, 
of the raft, if the raft can be said to have a 
bow. She saw, stretching down into the water, 
part of one of the ropes that she and her 
brother had used to tie together the pieces of 
boards. And this rope was stretched out in 
the water, straight and taut, like a fishline with 
a fish fast to it pulling to get off the hook. 

“Oh, Dick! Look!” cried Janet. “Some¬ 
thing is pulling us!” 

“I guess it is,” Dick said. “Something 
under the water has got hold of one of the 
dangling ropes and is giving us a tow.” 


180 Two Wild Cherries 

“Oh!” screamed Janet. “Fm afraid!” 

“What you scared of ?” Dick wanted to know. 

“It’s a whale! I’m sure it’s a whale pulling 
us!” cried Janet. “Oh, Dick!” 

“There aren’t any whales in here!” Dick 
declared. 

“Well, what is it then?” his sister wanted to 
know. “Something has hold of us and it’s 
pulling us and maybe it’s a whale!” 

“No!” shouted Dick. “I know what it is! 
Some of those fellows—Tom Wade or Jim Nel¬ 
son are playing a trick on us! They’ve got 
hold of the rope and they’re pulling us back!” 

“How could they do it under water?” Janet 
wanted to know. “Oh, it must be a whale, 
Dick, or some big fish!” 

Dick was about to answer but just then, all 
of a sudden, the raft which was now moving 
rather swiftly, struck a hidden rock in the 
stream. Janet was standing near the edge of 
the raft. 

In another instant she lost her balance and 
toppled over into the water with a splash and a 
wild cry of: 

“Dick! Oh, Dick! I’m overboard!” 


CHAPTER XVIII 

RUNAWAY ROLLERS 

Dick Cherry was a quick, active little fel¬ 
low for his age. He was good at playing all 
sorts of games where one had to think in a 
hurry. And that is what Dick did now—when 
he saw his sister falling off the raft. 

‘Til get you! I’ll get you!” he shouted. 

Then he leaped into the water at the point 
where Janet had fallen overboard. But Dick 
leaped in feet first and Janet had fallen in head 
first—that was the difference. Janet’s head, 
nose, eyes and mouth, going under water, 
stopped her breathing for a moment. 

But Dick landed right side up, so to speak, 
and found the water no more than over his 
knees. It was really hardly deep enough to 
swim in, and Janet would have been in no 
trouble had she, like Dick, gone in feet first. 

As it was, however, she was on one side, 
kicking, squirming, struggling and gasping for 
181 


182 Two Wild Cherries 

breath in the shallow water. She happened to 
remember what her father had told her to do 
in case she ever did fall into the pond or brook: 

“Hold your breath! Don't try to breathe, 
or the water will come in your nose and mouth 
and you will choke." 

Janet did not think of this quite in time. But 
after the first gasp, when she found the choking 
water entering her nose and mouth, she shut 
her teeth firmly together and said to herself: 

“I mustn't breathe! I mustn't breathe!" 

And she didn’t—any more—but she had al¬ 
ready swallowed some water which made her 
choke and gasp. 

Dick reached down and caught hold of the 
back of Janet's dress. Thus he was able to 
lift her up and out of the water. And as soon 
as Janet's face was free from the water she 
could breathe again. 

“Oh, Dick! Dick!" she gasped, still half 
choking! “I fell—I fell in the water! Don't 
let the big fish get me!" 

“There isn't any big fish!" declared Dick. 
But, even as he looked he saw his raft being 
towed up stream by something. And he knew 
it could not be one of the four boys who had 


Runaway Rollers 


183 

asked to ride on the raft. They could not have 
remained under water that long, nor was the 
stream at this point deep enough to hide them. 

“You’re all right now, Janet! You’re all 
right!” said Dick, as he wiped away some of 
the water from his sister’s face. “You’re not 
drowned!” 

“I know I’m not drowned!” she gasped in 
reply. “Course not! But I’m all—now I’m 
all WET!” 

And so she was—there was no getting away 
from that. She was much wetter than Dick, 
who was only splashed up to his waist. 

“I’ll help you to shore and we can get dry,” 
said Dick. “The sun is good and warm and 
we’ll soon dry.” 

“I don’t want to go home all wet!” said Janet. 
“Mother wouldn’t like it, nor Grandma, either, 
’specially after I lost her cameo pin. She’ll 
say we’re always doing something.” 

And it was true—the Wild Cherries were 
always doing something. 

“Look at the raft, Dick! It’s running away 
some more!” exclaimed Janet, pointing to the 
logs and boards which were still moving up the 
stream, with that rope stretched out in front 


184 


Two Wild Cherries 


so straight. Surely something under water 
had hold of it. 

“I wonder what it is? murmured Janet, who 
had gotten over her choking and gasping spell. 
“It’s a big fish, I’m sure!” 

At that moment the raft struck another low 
rock in the stream, and the craft swung to one 
side. As it did so something round and black, 
that was fastened to the tow rope, seemed to 
swim into the view of the children. 

“Oh, it’s a big turtle!” cried Janet. “A 
snapping turtle! Don’t let it bite me, Dick!” 
and she splashed her way toward the shore. 

“Yes, it is a turtle, and I guess it’s a snapper, 
too,” said Dick, as he saw the big water- 
reptile swimming away. “It’s a snapper and 
it got caught in one of the ropes. That’s what 
was swimming off with our raft. It wasn’t a 
whale, Janet.” 

“Well, it was almost like a whale, only, 
maybe, not so big,” said the little girl who had, 
by this time, reached shore. “What you 
s’pose made him take our raft, Dick?” 

“I don’t guess he did it on purpose,” replied 
Dick. “I guess the snapper was swimming 
along and he got tangled up in the dangling 


Runaway Rollers 185 

rope and he couldn’t get loose and so he towed 
us along. He’s big and strong.” 

Indeed it was a very large snapping turtle 
which had “fouled the towline” as a sailor 
might say. 

Dick and Janet had heard there were snap¬ 
ping turtles in the pond and brook, but never 
before had seen such a large one. They had 
often noticed small mud turtles in the water, 
and box tortoises on land, but none of them 
was as large as this snapper, which was almost 
the size of a small washtub, measuring across 
the crinkled shell on his back. 

“I’d like to catch him!” murmured Dick, as 
he saw the snapper swimming away, doubtless 
glad to be free of the rope. 

“Don’t you go after him!” cried Janet as 
she saw her brother make a move toward the 
swimming reptile. “He might bite you!” 

“If I could get him maybe I could sell him 
for a dollar,” went on Dick. 

“Well, you got to help me get dry in the sun, 
and you got to get dry yourself,” declared 
Janet, “else Mother and Grandma will think we 
are terrible and—look at the raft—it’s floating 
away! 


186 


Two Wild Cherries 


There was, indeed, enough for Dick to look 
after without trying to capture the turtle; no 
easy thing to do. So, letting the creature dis¬ 
appear in the mud and water of the stream, 
Dick went after the raft which, as it was no 
longer being towed by the turtle, was floating 
down stream again. 

Dick got on the raft and poled to shore where 
Janet awaited him. Both children were quite 
wet, but they did not mind this, for the day 
was warm and sunny. Fastening the raft 
to shore, Dick and Janet wrung as much water 
as they could from their garments, and then 
sat in the sunshine until they were pretty well 
dried. 

“Now we can go home/’ suggested Dick. 

“I guess mother’ll know that I fell in,” 
said Janet. “Don’t I sort of look so?” and she 
tried to smooth out her crumpled dress. 

“Yes, you do look mussed up,” admitted her 
brother. “But don’t you care! I look just as 
mussed.” 

“Oh, for the land sakes! What have you 
two Wild Cherries been up to now?” cried 
Grandma Cherry when she saw Janet and Dick 
coming toward the house a little later. 


Runaway Rollers 


i8 7 


“We had—now—we had an adventure/' 
answered Dick. 

“And I fell in,” added Janet, anxious to get 
the worst over with as soon as possible. 

“Oh, dear me!” cried Grandma. “Are you 
hurt?” 

“Thank you, no,” Janet answered, and then 
the story was told. 

It was of little use for Mother Cherry to say 
“don't do it again,” so she didn't. Janet and 
Dick would have been certain to promise 
not to, but if they didn't go rafting and fall 
in they would do something else, their mother 
felt sure. 

“You were a clever boy, Dick, to get Janet 
out as quickly as you did,” his mother said, and 
Dick felt a little proud of himself. 

No harm resulted from the raft adventure, 
but thereafter Dick and his sister were not per¬ 
mitted to do more than paddle a little distance 
from the shore on the ramshackle craft. 

Happy days of summer came and went, and 
the two Wild Cherries had many good times by 
themselves and with their playmates. One 
afternoon, when Janet had gone down street 
to play at having a dolls' party with Lulu Wil- 


188 Two Wild Cherries 

son and Sadie Clark, Dick got out his roller 
skates. 

“Do you want anything from the store, 
Mother ?” he called as he banged his way out of 
the front gate. 

“You might bring me three pounds of gran¬ 
ulated sugar,” she answered. “And be careful 
not to spill it.” 

“No’m, I won’t!” answered Dick. 

Down the street he went whistling, and 
clanging on his rollers, which he had newly 
oiled so that they ran smoothly. Dick was 
looking for some of his chums, but saw none 
of them. 

Dick always liked some of the boys to go to 
the store with him. He said he could go twice 
as fast as when he went alone. Whether this 
is true, or not, I don’t know. Certainly two 
boys can look at things more quickly than one 
—things along the street I mean, like a monkey 
with an organ grinder, or a dog chasing a cat. 
But, on the other hand, two boys can see more 
than one boy can see to stop and look at. So 
I guess it’s about even. 

At any rate Dick saw none of his chums, 
and so he reached the grocery all alone, which 


Runaway Rollers 


189 


was unusual for him. He skated in—most of 
the boys and girls of Vernon who had roller 
skates, kept them right on when they went to 
the stores, gliding in on the wheels. 

They were not allowed to wear their skates 
inside the public library, nor to the moving pic¬ 
ture theatre, but none of the storekeepers 
seemed to mind. 

‘Three pounds of granulated sugar, please,” 
ordered Dick of the clerk, and when it had been 
put in a bag he tucked it under his arm and 
skated out of the store. 

Now, as it happened, the grocery store was on 
a street that ran down hill—that is it ran down 
hill one way and up hill the other way. It hap¬ 
pened to be down hill for Dick as he was com¬ 
ing out. Usually he gave himself a good start 
at the door of the store and he could glide on his 
skates to the corner, some distance away. 

This time something happened. It may 
have been because Dick had newly oiled the 
roller skates that they glided so smoothly and 
so fast. At any rate he found himself gliding 
down the hilly sidewalk very rapidly. 

“Guess Td better slow up,” thought the boy. 
‘Tm a regular runaway!” 


190 


Two Wild Cherries 


But it was easier to think of slowing up than 
it was to really do it, and Dick found himself 
gliding faster and faster. In vain he dragged 
one skate sideways to act as a brake. It slowed 
him up only a little and still he found himself 
rushing toward the corner. 

“I hope nobody gets in my way!” thought 
Dick. 

It was a vain wish! Just as he reached the 
corner, going at almost full speed, a man came 
around the building from the opposite direction 
—a dark-complexioned man with gold rings in 
his ears. 

Into this man Dick bumped—a banging col¬ 
lision which threw Dick backward and also the 
man. Dick had a momentary glimpse of him 
—it was Kobah the Gipsy driver of the red 
wagon. 

“Oh!” gasped Dick. 

“Um!” grunted the Gipsy. 

Then the bag of sugar, which had slipped 
from beneath Dick's arm, going up in the air 
like a baseball, came down. It came down on 
Kobah's head. The bag burst and Dick and 
the Gipsy were showered with the three pounds 
of granulated sugar. 


CHAPTER XIX 


JANET IN A TANGLE 

For a few seconds after the collision, caused 
by the runaway roller skates, neither Dick nor 
the Gipsy said anything. They sat there on 
the sidewalk, at the corner, “like two islands,” 
as Dick said later. 

“What did you mean—two islands?” asked 
Janet as her brother told the story at home. 

“I mean we were surrounded by spilled 
sugar,” laughed Dick. “An island, you know, 
is some land surrounded by water. But the 
Gipsy man and I were surrounded by sugar. 
It was all over!” And Dick laughed again as 
he remembered it. 

But though it was easy enough to laugh 
afterward, it was not so easy to chuckle as he 
sat there on the sidewalk, somewhat out of 
breath from the collision and the fall. Kobah 
looked with his dark eyes at the one wild little 
Cherry boy. 


192 


Two Wild Cherries 


“What for you do?” asked Kobah, and he 
gave himself a wiggle and a shake as he felt 
some grains of sugar inside his shirt. 

“I didn’t mean to do it,” answered Dick and 
he, also, gave himself a shake and a wiggle. 
“I guess the sugar’s down my back like it is 
down yours; isn’t it?” he asked the Gipsy who 
was once suspected of having kidnapped the 
children. 

“Much sugar down my back,” announced 
Kobah. Sometimes he could talk fairly good 
English, it seemed, and again he pretended not 
to know a word of that tongue. Gipsies were 
sly folk, Dick thought. 

“Yes, it’s down my back, too,” went on Dick. 
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it,” he added, 
apologizing again. “I got going so fast I 
couldn’t stop. And—whew! Mother will 
give it to me for spilling all that sugar!” he 
murmured. “No use trying to gather it up, 
either! It’s gone!” 

Dick looked at Kobah curiously. 

“How is it you aren’t deaf any more?” the 
boy asked. “You couldn’t hear me and Janet 
holler and knock when we were in your wagon. 
Aren’t you deaf any more?” 


Janet in a Tangle 193 

“Not so much deaf,” answered Kobah. 
“Doctor man fix ears—make hear better.” 

Whether it was really this, or whether it was 
that Kobah only pretended to be hard of hear¬ 
ing at times, Dick did not know. Certainly 
the Gipsy seemed to hear him all right now. 

Some boys and girls, and other passers-by, 
had stopped to look at the scene of the accident. 
Dick scrambled to his feet, an example quickly 
followed by the Gipsy. As soon as it was seen 
that neither of them was hurt, the older folk 
who had stopped at the scene passed on. But 
the children lingered. 

“Look at the sugar!” murmured a girl. 
“Oh, jest look at it!” 

“He’ll get it when he goes home!” added a 
boy. Perhaps an accident like this had once 
happened to him and he remembered. 

“Too bad—much sugar no good,” mumbled 
the Gipsy. “Maybe I come ’round corner too 
fast—I no see you!” 

“And I didn’t see you—not until I bumped 
into you,” ruefully admitted Dick. “Well, I’ll 
have to go back and get more sugar and charge 
it on the bill. Guess I’d better take off my 
skates, too,” he added. 


194 


Two Wild Cherries 


He gave himself another shake to get rid of 
more of the tickling grains of sugar that had 
sifted down his back. Kobah also wiggled for 
the same purpose. Then the Gipsy spoke, 
saying: 

“I buy sugar for your mother. Maybe she 
whip you if you come home with broken bag. 
Kobah part to blame for make sugar spill. I 
buy!” 

Before Dick quite realized what the dark 
man was doing, the Gipsy had slipped into the 
store and came out with three more pounds of 
the sweet stuff, paying for it himself. 

“I say—look here—I don’t want you to do 
this!” objected Dick. “It was my own fault 
for skating when I had a bag of sugar in my 
hands. Mother would say it was my fault.” 

“All right,” and Kobah grinned in a cheerful 
fashion. “You take him bag of sugar home— 
no tell mother any bag broken—all the same.” 

“Oh, I guess not!” cried Dick. “I’ll tell 
mother just how it happened, but I’m afraid she 
won’t like it—you buying this second bag/’ 

“She no can stop me. I got my own money!” 
chuckled the Gipsy. “But all the same you 


Janet in a Tangle 


195 


tell—better so make it the truth for mother.’" 

“Yes,” agreed Dick, and, somewhat in a 
daze, he accepted the bag which the dark man 
held out to him. Then the Gipsy, giving him¬ 
self another shake to get rid of the sugar still 
tickling him, hurried off up the street. 

“Oh, I say!” called Dick after him. 

“No come back! You take sugar!” cried 
Kobah, hardly turning his head. 

“No, I didn’t mean that,” went on the lad. 
“But did you find my grandmother’s cameo 
pin?” 

“No find pin,” was the answer. “All gone, I 
guess. Gone like him first bag sugar!” 

“I guess so—all gone like I thought the 
sugar was,” murmured Dick as the Gipsy van¬ 
ished around the next corner. “But he was 
very kind to buy this for me. I wonder what 
mother will say?” 

Dick jumped up and down two or three 
times. 

“What you doing that for?” asked Buddy 
Nestor, the little brother of Mary. “Is you 
glad you fell down?” Buddy was in the crowd 
of children that had gathered. 


196 Two Wild Cherries 

“No, Fm jumping up and down to get the 
sugar out of my back, ,, laughed Dick. “Most 
of it’s out now, though, I guess.” 

He took off his rollers, so there would be no 
further chance of accident and then, carrying 
the second bag of sugar most carefully, started 
for home. Already a colony of ants were 
gathering in the street to take under ground the 
sweet grains Dick had spilled. It was a great 
treasure trove for the ants, and I suppose it 
was talked of in that ant colony for many years 
after that. Probably they called that season 
“Big Sugar Year” for many generations 
thereafter. 

“Well, Dick, what’s the matter? Why do 
you wiggle so?” asked his mother, as he reached 
home, for he was twisting and squirming. 

“I got a lot of sugar down my back!” 
laughed the boy. 

“Sugar!” cried Mrs. Cherry. “You don’t 
mean to tell me you have been having a sugar 
fight with—” 

“Oh, no, Mother!” Dick hastened to say, and 
then he told what had happened. 

“Dear me!” murmured Mrs. Cherry when 
her son had explained it all, even about the 


Janet in a Tangle 


197 


Gipsy and himself being sort of “islands” sur¬ 
rounded by sweet grains. “Something is 
always happening now-a-days, it seems—just 
when I wanted everything nice and quiet for 
Grandma.” 

“I guess she would have laughed if she could 
have seen this,” chuckled Dick. “I asked the 
Gipsy man about her pin, but he hadn’t seen 
it.” 

“No, I don’t suppose we’ll ever get it back,” 
sighed Mrs. Cherry. “But what is that Gipsy 
doing around here again?” she asked. “I 
thought he had gone away.” 

“I guess they go and come,” said; 'Janet. 
“Gipsies roam all over. Oh, but Dick! You 
must have looked so funny!” she laughed. 

“I felt funny, too,” said her brother. “I 
feel funny yet. It’s worse than a lot of sand 
down my back! I’m going to get it out,” and 
he went up to his room. 

“It was kind of Kobah to buy the other bag 
of sugar,” said Mrs. Cherry to her husband, 
talking of the accident later. “But I think we 
ought not to let him spend his money on us. 
Gipsies are poor folk.” 

“Not as poor as some people think,” said Mr. 


198 


Two Wild Cherries 


Cherry. “But when I see Kobah, I’ll make 
him take back what he spent. It was Dick’s 
fault for skating too fast.” 

So another day came and went, with the 
two Wild Cherries no tamer than before. In¬ 
deed, as Grandma Cherry said, she thought 
they grew worse, instead of better. 

“But I love them!” she said to Daddy and 
Mother Cherry. “They don’t do anything very 
wrong, even if they do get into trouble now 
and then.” 

“Yes, they are pretty good children,” said 
Mother Cherry. 

It was about the middle of the next after¬ 
noon that Janet called to her mother, asking: 

“May I go over to Mary’s house?” 

“Yes, but come home in time for supper,” 
her mother answered. 

“Yes’m, I will,” promised Janet. “I’m go¬ 
ing to help her gather the eggs.” 

The Nestors lived not far from the Cherry 
home, and Mr. Nestor had built a chicken 
house, keeping a few hens that he might have 
fresh eggs. Living not exactly in the country, 
but near enough to know some of the joys of 
that wonderful region, it was quite a treat to 


Janet in a Tangle 199 

either Dick or Janet to help gather the Nestor 
eggs. 

“Be careful now!” warned Mrs. Cherry, as 
Janet ran off with Mary Nestor. “Don't drop 
any of the eggs!” 

And Janet promised that she would not. 

It was a trifle early to go about looking for 
the eggs when the two little girls reached the 
Nestor home, so Mary proposed that they play 
with their dolls a while, and to this Janet agreed. 

But as the sun sank lower behind the west¬ 
ern hills, casting a golden red glow over the 
trees, Mrs. Nestor called to her daughter: 

“Better gather the eggs now, my dear, be¬ 
fore it gets too late.” 

“Yes’m,” agreed Mary. “Janet is going to 
help me.” 

Carrying the basket between them, Mary and 
Janet went toward the chicken house, where 
there were rows of straw-lined box nests in 
which the chickens were supposed to lay their 
eggs. 

I say “supposed,” because often it was found 
that some hen would “steal her nest”; that is 
make one for herself in some secret place. In 
this hidden nest she would lay her eggs, hoping 


200 


Two Wild Cherries 


to get together about a dozen, when she would 
set on them, warm them through three long 
weary weeks, and, after that time, hatch out 
tiny, baby chickens. 

So it was the custom of the Nestors to look 
for these hidden nests, as they wanted eggs 
more than they wanted baby chickens. And 
after the girls had taken the eggs from the 
regular nests in the hen house, there began a 
sort of hunting game. 

“You look over in those bushes,” said Mary 
to Janet, “and IT 1 look in these. There’s a 
speckled hen been hiding away her eggs and 
we want to find her.” 

“Oh, I hope I find her nest and a lot of 
eggs!” exclaimed Janet. 

“I hope you do,” added Mary, unselfishly, and 
^he pointed to a tangle of bushes back of the 
hen house,—for Janet to search in, while Mary, 
herself, went toward a clump at one end of 
the big coop. 

Janet had helped hunt for hidden nests be¬ 
fore this, and she knew how cautiously to part 
the bushes and look under them, for some snug 
little hollow on the ground where the hens 
loved to hide away their treasures. 


Janet in a Tangle 


201 


Suddenly, as Janet looked, she saw a gleam 
of something white under a big burdock leaf. 
Carefully she thrust the leaf to one side and 
there, in a grass-lined hole, she saw a dozen 
large eggs. 

“Oh, I’ve found a lot!” she called to Mary. 
A fine lot!” 

“That’s good I” Mary answered. “I thought 
maybe that old speckled hen had a nest over 
there.” 

“I’ll put the eggs in my apron and bring them 
out ” went on Janet. There was no need of 
caution now, for the hens had wandered in 
from the vacant lots and were gathering in 
the chicken yard ready for their last feeding 
of cracked corn before going to roost. 

Janet carefully picked up the eggs—there 
was just an even dozen of them—and placed 
them in her apron, holding the lower edge gath¬ 
ered up in her left hand. 

Then, with the precious load, she began to 
back out of the jungle of bushes. But she did 
not think of the wild strawberry and black¬ 
berry vines that were clustered on the ground 
at her feet. 

Before she realized what was happening, 


202 


Two Wild Cherries 


Janet got into a tangle. One toe caught under 
a strong vine loop and the little girl tripped. 
She felt herself falling and cried: 

“Oh! Oh, dear!" 

“What's the matter?" asked Mary. “Is the 
old hen after you? I'll come and drive her 
off!" 

“No! ’Tisn’t that!" Janet replied. 

That was all she had time to say for, an in¬ 
stant later, she fell down in the snarl of bushes 
and vines—she fell down, eggs and all, and she 
heard the crack of breaking shells. 


CHAPTER XX 

WILD WEST 

Her feet twisted in the running vines, her 
hair caught in a briar bush, and with a dozen 
of eggs—many of them broken—in her apron, 
the whites and yellows slowly oozing messily 
over her hands, poor Janet was in a sad state. 

“What's the matter ?" called Mary who had 
found a hidden nest with a few eggs in, and 
had placed them safely in the basket with the 
others. “Oh, Janet, what's the matter?" 

“It's—now it's just—TERRIBLE!" gasped 
Janet, trying to get up, but not being able to 
do so because her legs were so caught and held 
in the vines. 

Mary set her basket of eggs carefully down 
on the ground and ran toward the clump of 
bushes where she had directed Janet to search. 
She caught a glimpse of her friend—she saw 
the running whites and yellows of the smashed 
eggs. 


203 


204 


Two Wild Cherries 


"Oh! Oh! Oh!” gasped Mary, three 
times—just like that. It was all she could say, 
she was so surprised. 

"Isn’t it awful?” cried Janet, rolling over on 
her back so she would be in a better position to 
arise. "Won’t your mother be terrible mad 
at me for breaking all these eggs?” 

Mary did not answer for a moment. Then 
she softly murmured: 

"You poor thing!” 

"But won’t your mother be mad-—I mean 
angry?” asked Janet, for, even in the midst of 
her trouble she remembered that her teacher 
had told her not to say "mad” when one meant 
"angry.” 

"Mother won’t care,” said Mary. "She 
didn’t know those eggs were there so she won’t 
mind ’cause they’re broken.” 

"Oh, but we’ll have to tell her!” declared 
Janet, bravely. 

"Yes, I s’pose so,” agreed Mary. "Oh, what 
a mess!” she murmured as she saw Janet’s 
dress and apron covered with sticky whites and 
yellows, broken bits of shell mingling with the 
paste. 

There was a rustling in the bushes near the 


Wild West 


205 

girls, as Janet managed to scramble her way 
out to a clear place, and a voice gasped: 

“Oh!” 

“Who was that?” asked Janet sharply as she 
caught a glimpse of a small boy dashing off 
through the underbrush. 

“I don't know,” Mary answered. “It looked 
like Toddy Blake.” 

Toddy Blake was Jim Blake's little brother, 
a wandering small chap who always turned up 
at the most unexpected times and places. 
And this time he had reached the place just 
after Janet broke the dozen eggs. Toddy gave 
one look at the strange and woeful sight and 
then dashed over to the Cherry house. 

“Oh! Oh!” he gasped as he rushed up on 
the shady side porch where Mother Cherry and 
Grandmother Cherry were sewing. “Oh, you 
ought to see Janet!” 

“What's the matter now?” asked Mrs. 
Cherry. She did not get as excited as did her 
mother-in-law who cried: 

“What has happened? Has the poor child 
fallen in again?” 

“No, but she's all whites and yellows!” went 
on Toddy. “You ought to see her!” 


206 


Two Wild Cherries 


He was fairly trembling with the excitement 
of being a bearer of such wonderful news. 

“Where is she?" asked Janet's mother. 

“Over by Mr. Nestor's hen house," Toddy 
replied. “Oh, you ought to see her—all whites 
and yellows and—and—” 

But Grandma and Mother Cherry did not 
wait to hear more. Dropping their sewing, 
they hastened across the back lots to the 
Nestor home. About this same time, Mrs. 
Nestor, wondering why the two little girls were 
spending so much time gathering the eggs, 
went out to look for them. She heard the 
voices of Janet and Mary and, a little later, 
came upon them as they were slowly walking 
toward the house, Mary carrying the basket 
of eggs and Janet holding her dress out away 
from her, so the eggs would not run down into 
her shoes. 

“Oh, Janet, what happened?" cried Mrs. 
Nestor. 

“You poor child!" murmured Grandma 
Cherry. And Mrs. Cherry, who with her 
husband's mother had just then arrived, 
added: 

“Why did you break the eggs, Janet?" 


Wild West 


207 


“I didn’t mean to,” sobbed the little girl, for 
her spirit was almost as badly broken as were 
the frail shells. “I—now—I couldn’t help it 
and—” 

And then Janet simply gave up trying to be 
brave, and cried in real earnest, as almost any 
little girl would have done. 

“There, there, my dear,” soothed her mother, 
and, caring nothing for the messy eggs, Mrs. 
Cherry put her arms around her daughter. 
There the story was told, in turns by Janet and 
Mary. The three ladies looked at one another 
over the heads of the children, wanting to laugh 
but knowing how wrong it would be. And 
then Mrs. Nestor said: 

“Never mind, Janet. We have enough eggs 
without those, and the speckled hen will lay 
plenty others. She is a very busy chicken. 
Don’t cry any more.” 

“Oh, but I’m so sorry!” sighed Janet, and 
then as she saw the queer looks on the faces of 
her mother, her grandmother and Mary’s 
mother, Janet couldn’t help laughing at her¬ 
self. 

“Come in the house and clean yourself off,” 
suggested Mrs. Nestor. 


208 Two Wild Cherries 

“Oh, Til take her home and do it there,” 
said Mrs. Cherry. 

“The poor child is too distressing a sight to 
lead across the lots where the other children will 
see her,” went on Mrs. Nestor. “You run off 
home, Toddy,” she said to Jim Blake’s curious 
little brother, who had come back, after tell¬ 
ing the news, to see what else was going to 
happen. “Run home, Toddy.” 

And Toddy, with a last, lingering look at 
the egg-smeared Janet, ran away murmuring: 

“Oh! Oh! Oh! She’s like a chicken; 
Janet’s like a chicken! Oh! Oh!” 

The worst of the mess washed from her 
dress and apron, Janet went home with her 
mother and grandmother. 

“I’m not going to hunt any more hens’ nests 
in bushes,” she declared. “Never!” 

“I wouldn’t, either,” chuckled Dick. He 
just couldn’t help laughing a little (though he 
felt sorry for his sister). He could well im¬ 
agine how she looked. 

For several days after the smashing of the 
eggs, nothing much happened to the two Wild 
Cherries. They played about the house and 
yard, now and then wandering away over the 


Wild West 


209 


fields and through the woods with their boy 
and girl friends. It was glorious summer— 
the time of long, sunshiny days filled with 
pleasure. 

Not far from the Cherry home, down a lane 
off the main road, lived Nate Feldman, a junk¬ 
man. He had a ramshackle old wagon, and a 
bony, slowly-moving horse that seemed more 
than half asleep all of the time, so sedately did 
it shuffle along. Mr. Feldman used to buy old 
papers, old automobile tires, old bottles and old 
iron. In fact he never bought anything new 
—just old junk. He was a genial, good- 
natured man, fond of children and often paid 
them a few pennies more for the old junk they 
sold him than any other dealer would have done. 

One day Dick, who with his sister, Mary 
Nestor and Sam Ward was wandering over 
the lots not far from Feldman’s Lane, as it was 
called—one day Dick had a brilliant idea. It 
came to him in a flash. 

“I know what let’s do!” he cried. 

'‘What?” asked Sam, idly tossing a stone 
over the fence. “Do you mean get out your 
old raft and go sailing?” 

“No, we couldn’t all get on the raft,” Dick 


210 


Two Wild Cherries 


answered. “It’s something better than that.” 

“Do you mean go to the Gipsy camp in the 
cranberry bog and take another look for 
Grandma's pin?” Janet inquired. 

“No, that wouldn't do any good,” answered 
Dick. “It's something better than that.” 

“Say, didn't you ever get that pin back?” 
Sam Ward wanted to know. 

“No, we never did,” and Janet sadly shook 
her head. “I wish I could find it, though,” 
she added. 

“I heard that Gipsy was back in town,” went 
on Sam. “You know—that one who took you 
two off in his wagon—Kobah. Somebody said 
he brought the pin back.” 

“No, he didn’t,” answered Dick. “I ran into 
him on my rollers, and knocked him down and 
spilled the sugar. But he said he didn't know 
anything about the pin.” 

“Maybe he did, all the same,” declared Sam. 
“Gipsies are queer, my mother says. They 
can tell what's going to happen. Maybe he 
knows where the pin is and he's trying to get 
it to keep for himself.” 

“I wish if he finds it he'd give it to me so 


Wild West 


211 


I could give it back to Grandma," spoke Janet. 
“She doesn't say much about it, but I know 
she wants her cameo." 

“It would be wonderful if we could find it," 
declared Mary. “But what were you going to 
do, Dick? Is it fun?" 

“Sure it’ll be fun!" exclaimed Dick. “Let’s 
play Wild West!" he proposed. 

“How?" asked Sam. “Wild West! What 
do you mean?" 

“We’ll get Mr. Feldman’s horse and ride 
him—you and I, Sam. We’ll make a lasso of 
the clothesline and lasso Mary and Janet." 

“No you don’t—you shan’t lasso me!" cried 
Mary. “The last time you tried you made my 
neck all red, and you tripped me and I fell in 
a puddle of water!" 

“We can play it out here on the grass where 
it’s nice and dry," suggested Dick. “Then you 
won’t get in any puddles." 

“You can lasso me if you want to," offered 
Janet. She was always ready for any sort of 
fun like this. 

“Come on then!" cried Dick. “I’ll lasso 
Janet but not you, Mary. You can make be- 


212 


Two Wild Cherries 


lieve be an Indian, and they don’t lasso Indians, 
I guess. Anyhow we’ll play Wild West.” 

“Maybe Mr. Feldman won’t let you take his 
horse,” suggested Sam. 

“Oh, I guess he will,” said Dick. “He’s let 
me ride it lots of times, and my father is go¬ 
ing to sell him a lot of junk next week, so Mr. 
Feldman will do as I ask him. Come on, we’ll 
get his horse!” 

They walked down the lane, and before they 
reached the old cabin where the junkman lived 
they could see that his wagon was in the yard. 
And where the wagon was the horse would be 
also, for the two were seldom separated. 

“I guess Gasolene is in his stable,” remarked 
Dick. The children called the junk man’s 
horse “Gasolene,” or just “Gassy,” for short. 
Of course the animal wasn’t at all like gaso¬ 
lene—that is he wasn’t quick and lively. So, 
naturally, the name was only given him in fun. 
Mr. Feldman called his horse “Old Ironsides,” 
and for a very good reason, as perhaps you can 
imagine. 

“Yes, Gassy is here,” went on Dick, as he 
looked in the stall. 

“But Mr. Feldman isn’t home—his door is 


Wild West 


213 

locked on the outside/’ reported Janet Who had 
taken a look. 

“Oh, well, no matter, we’ll take Gassy, any¬ 
how, and play Wild West,” decided Dick. 


CHAPTER XXI 

GASSY RUNS AWAY 

Gassy, the junkman’s horse, was about as 
shabby, ill-kept and, altogether, as good- 
natured as his master. As Dick entered the 
humble stable, where Gassy lived all by him¬ 
self, the animal turned his rather sad face 
around on his long, not overly-thick neck and 
looked to see who was entering. He whin- 
neyed gently as much as to ask: 

“Are you bringing me some oats ?” 

Gassy hardly ever had oats to chew on— 
oats were too expensive for a poor junkman 
to buy for his horse, so Gassy never really got 
any. But he could not give up expecting them. 
However he did not make any fuss when he 
saw that Dick and the other children came in 
empty handed. 

“Hello, Gassy!” greeted Dick, slapping the 
horse familiarly on the flank. “Come on out 
and play!” the boy added with a laugh. 

214 


Gassy Runs Away 215 

“You’re going to have some fun!” added 
Sam. 

“Playing Wild West,” continued Janet, who 
was almost as much a boy as was her brother. 

“But you can’t lasso me!” declared Mary. 

“No, I’m not going to,” promised Dick. 

Gassy was no stranger to the two Wild Cher¬ 
ries and their chums. Mr. Feldman had made 
friends with the girls and boys by buying of 
them such junk as they brought him, and, more 
than once, Dick and Janet had ridden on the 
back of the old horse after Mr. Feldman had 
unhitched the animal at the close of a day’s 
journeying. Mary and Sam were not so well 
acquainted with Old Ironsides, or Gassy, as 
the children like to call the horse, but they were 
not utter strangers to him. 

“I’ll lead him out and then we’ll take turns 
riding on his back,” suggested Dick, as he 
loosed the halter that held Gassy in his stall. 
Not that the horse would be likely to wander; 
for usually he was so tired, after dragging the 
junk wagon about all day, that not even a big 
fire cracker, exploded right beneath him, would 
have caused him to run. 

But this was a sort of holiday with Gassy. 


2l6 


Two Wild Cherries 


His master had gone off early in the morning, 
taking a train to a distant town to see a sister 
who was ill, so the horse did not have to work. 
In consequence he was rather spry when Dick 
led him out of the barn. 

“Can't I have a ride?" begged Janet. “I 
won't fall off." 

“Yes, you can have a little ride," her brother 
promised, “but you can't be a cowboy and ride 
fast, 'cause Sam and I are going to be cow¬ 
boys." 

“I can be a cowgirl," declared Janet. 

“What do you mean—cowgirl?" asked Dick, 
pausing near the barn door, while Gassy sniffed 
the fresh air, and, doubtless, wondered what 
was going on. 

“They have cowgirls in the Wild West, 
'cause I saw pictures of 'em!" insisted Janet. 

“So did I," added Mary. 

“Oh, well, maybe there are cowgirls," ad¬ 
mitted Dick, “but you girls can’t lasso with the 
clothesline, nor ride fast." 

“I don't want to lasso with the clothesline," 
said Janet, “but I'll ride as fast as a cowgirl— 
so there!" 

“Oh, all right! All right!" agreed Dick, 


Gassy Runs Away 217 

anxious not to have a fuss before the fun was 
fairly started. “We’ll take turns.” 

“Where’s the lasso ?” asked Sam. 

“And you haven’t got any saddle on the 
horse,” added Mary. 

“I don’t need any saddle,” answered Dick. 
“Real Wild West cowboys or cowgirls don’t 
need a saddle. But I got to have a lasso. 
We’ll take Mr. Feldman’s clothesline,” he con¬ 
tinued, pointing to one stretched between two 
posts that seemed about to fall over by their 
own weight. “I don’t want to go all the way 
back to our house to get a line. You take that 
one, Sam. We can put it back again after we 
get through.” 

While Sam loosened the line from the posts, 
Dick led Gassy up to a pile of boxes where he 
intended to mount the animal. Gassy would 
stand still long enough for this, Dick knew. 
In fact standing still was one of the best things 
that Gassy did. He would rather do that than 
anything else, it seemed. 

While the girls watched, Janet eager for 
her turn, Dick managed to scramble up on the 
rather bony back of Gassy. 

“You haven’t got anything to pull on his 


Two Wild Cherries 






218 

mouth with, like the cowboys have in the Wild 
West,” objected Mary. 

This was true—there was only a halter on 
Gassy’s head—no bit or bridle. 

“Some cowboys ride this way,” said Dick 
calmly, as if he knew all about it. And, as a 
matter of fact, some cowboys do ride wild 
horses with only a halter instead of a bridle 
and bit—but they are expert riders, of course. 
However Gassy was not a regular Wild West 
horse, so it was safe enough, as it happened. 

“Now you make believe you’re a steer and 
run,” urged Dick to Sam, “and I’ll lasso you.” 

“Don’t pull me too tight,” begged Sam, as 
he prepared to run across the field. Dick, 
swinging a loop of the junkman’s clothesline 
around his head, as he had seen pictures of 
cowboys do, prepared to do the lasso act, urg¬ 
ing Gassy to as fast a gait as the horse could 
keep up. 

“I’ll be careful,” promised Dick. 

Gassy was very stiff and old. He did not 
care much for this sort of fun, if the truth be 
told. He would much have preferred to be al¬ 
lowed to crop the sweet, green grass. But 



‘Whoopee! Wow! I’m a Wild West cowboy! 





Gassy Runs Away 


219 


horses are accustomed to doing as the driver, 
or rider on their back, directs them. So Gassy 
ambled off, being guided by Dick in pursuit of 
the running Sam. 

“Make him go faster!” cried Janet. 

“He’s awful slow!” added Mary. 

“Gid-dap!” called Dick, clapping his little 
heels against the ribs of Gassy. The ribs 
showed plainly. You could almost count them. 

Thus urged, Gassy broke into a short trot, 
chugging Dick up and down on his back like 
butter in a churn. 

“Now you’re going!” yelled Dick. 
“Whoopee! Wow! I’m a Wild West cow¬ 
boy ! Gid-dap, Gassy!” 

He yelled, while the girls laughed and Sam 
ran on ahead. It was not easy, without a bit 
and bridle, to guide Gassy after the running 
boy, but Dick did the best he could. At last 
he found himself close behind his chum, and, 
swinging the rope in another twirl of loops, he 
shot it from his hand trying to do it as he 
thought a cowboy would. 

The coils fell far short of the running Sam. 

“I can do as good as that!” taunted Janet. 


220 


Two Wild Cherries 


“You just wait!” cried Dick. “It got 
tangled. IT1 try again. Go on, Sam, run 
some more!” 

“Aw, I’m tired!” Sam protested. “Let me 
ride now—it’s my turn!” 

“No, I got to lasso you first,” declared Dick, 
as he pulled in the rope, meanwhile sitting on 
Gassy’s back, the horse having come to a full 
stop. 

“All right. You have one more chance and 
then it’s my turn,” insisted Sam. 

“And then I want a ride,” added Janet. 
“Don’t you, Mary?” 

“I’ll ride if you let the horse walk,” Mary 
said. She was not quite as wild as the 
Cherries. 

“I’ll lead him for you,” offered Sam. 

“Go on now, run!” ordered Dick, who had 
the rope coiled again. “I’m going to lasso you, 
Sam!” 

“All right, but hurry up—I want my turn,” 
was the answer. 

“Go on, Gassy! Gid-dap!” commanded 
Dick, and once more, with a sort of patient, re¬ 
signed air, and perhaps an inward creaking of 
his old joints, the junkman’s horse started off. 


Gassy Runs Away 


221 


Then Sam had an idea. As long as he ran 
too fast Dick could not fling a coil of rope 
about his head, and thus the game would be 
prolonged. Sam might not get his turn for 
quite a while. 

So when Sam, by turning half-way around, 
saw Dick coming after him, whooping and 
swinging the clothesline lasso, Sam slowed up, 
and, as the coils of rope swung near him, Sam 
actually thrust his head through. 

“I caught you! I lassoed you!” shouted 
Dick, pulling back with one hand on the lasso 
and with the other on the looped halter around 
Gassy’s head. 

“Yes, you caught me fair,” admitted Sam, 
but he did not say he had purposely thrust his 
head into the noose. “And now it’s my turn 
to lasso you,” he added. 

“All right,” agreed Dick, rather sorry he 
had been so successful. It was fun to ride on 
Gassy’s back, playing at being a cowboy. But 
he must be fair. 

“Say, don’t I get a turn?” cried Janet. 

“In a minute—soon as Sam ropes me,” an¬ 
swered her brother. “You girls can play be¬ 
ing Indians ’till we get ready.” 


222 


Two Wild Cherries 


“Pooh! That's no fun!" exclaimed Janet. 
“I want a ride and so does Mary." 

“All right—in a little while!” promised Dick. 

Then Sam mounted to Gassy’s bony back, 
and swung the lasso as Dick had done, chasing 
that little Wild Cherry lad who raced about, 
pretending to be a steer, a runaway horse or a 
mountain lion, as suited his fancy. 

And, after a little while, either by good 
management or luck, Sam threw the coil about 
Dick’s shoulders, and pulled so hard that Dick 
was yanked off his feet. 

“Oh, look out! Don’t do that!’’ cried Janet, 
fearing lest Dick be hurt. 

“I didn’t mean to, but Gassy stopped all of 
a sudden,’’ explained Sam. 

“That’s all right—I’m not hurt,’’ and Dick 
jumped up, laughing, though his fall had not 
been an easy one. “You caught me good, 
Sam,’’ he added, “and now it’s my turn to—’’ 

“No, it’s our turn!’’ insisted Janet, “and if 
we don’t get some rides we’re not going to play 
—so there!’’ 

“Give ’em some turns," advised Sam, slid¬ 
ing off Gassy’s back. 

Janet next mounted, with the aid of an empty 


Gassy Runs Away 


223 


box, and she rode about the field near the junk¬ 
man’s house. She even swung the lasso and 
yelled as Dick had done, but the boys would not 
let her try to lasso them, saying she might 
tangle the rope around their legs. And Mary 
was too timid for this part of the fun. 

“All right, then I’ll lasso a post!” decided 
Janet. And, what is more, she did it, too. 
She rode toward one of the clothes posts as fast 
as she could make Gassy gallop and, somewhat 
to her own surprise, as well as the astonishment 
of her playmates, she flung the loop straight 
and true around the post on her first cast. 

“Now I’m just like a real cowgirl!” laughed 
Janet. “Come on, Mary,” she added, “it’s your 
turn to ride.” 

“Somebody’s got to lead Gassy, then,” Mary 
insisted. “I don’t know how to steer a horse.” 

“I’ll lead him,” kindly offered Dick, and he 
gave Mary a good, long ride around the fields. 

“Now I’ll be a cowboy again,” suggested 
Dick, as he and Sam helped Mary down off 
Gassy’s back. “You must run real fast, Sam, 
so’s it’ll be hard to lasso you.” 

“All right, but don’t trip me up,” begged the 
other boy. 


224 


Two Wild Cherries 


“I won’t,” Dick promised. 

He was leading Gassy back toward the pile 
of boxes, which served as a mounting block 
for the riders, when Gassy, with a sudden mo¬ 
tion of his head, pulled the end of the halter out 
of Dick’s hand. 

“Whoa Gassy!” called the boy. 

But Gassy did not “whoa!” He swung 
away, with the intention of getting a mouthful 
of the juicy grass. And, just then, a bee, sail¬ 
ing through the air, happened to light on the 
animal’s flank. Whether the bee did not like 
horses, or whether it was angry because of the 
collision, I do not know. But the bee stung the 
junkman’s bony steed. 

In an instant, with wild whinny of a cry, 
Gassy kicked up his heels and, a moment later, 
was running away across the fields faster than 
he had galloped in many a long day. 

“Oh, there he goes!” cried Janet. “There he 
goes.” 


CHAPTER XXII 

ON THE TRAIL 

There was no doubt of it. Gassy was cer¬ 
tainly going! 

Off over the fields he ran, kicking up his 
heels and shaking his head, his tail and mane 
flying in the wind. It was more freedom than 
the old junk horse had had in many a year, and 
he was making the most of it. 

Of course the sting of the bee started him off, 
but after he once began going he must have 
liked it so well that, very likely, he said to him¬ 
self : 

“I’m just going to run as much as I please, 
for once. And I don't have to drag after me 
a rattling, old junk wagon! Hurray!" 

Mind you, I am not stating for certain that 
Gassy said this. But he might easily have 
thought it—might he not? 

“Oh, look at him go!" gasped Mary. 

“He sure is running away!" added Sam. 

225 


226 


Two Wild Cherries 


“And weVe got to run after him !” declared 
Dick. 

“What do you mean—run after him?” asked 
his sister. “I’ve had enough of playing Wild 
West. I’m going home! Come on, Mary, 
we’ll have a little play-party for our dolls, and 
maybe Jane will give us some cookies to eat— 
real cookies,” she added. 

“But say,” protested Dick. “We got to run 
after Gassy!” 

“What for?” Janet wanted to know. 
“We’re done playing with him; aren’t we— 
anyhow Mary and I are, if you boys want 
to—” 

“But we got to put him back in the stable,” 
went on Dick. “We took him out and we got 
to put him back. Mr. Feldman won’t care that 
we took his horse if we put him back—but we 
got to put him back!” 

“That’s right!” agreed Sam, who understood 
what Dick meant. “We got to get Gassy 
back.” 

“But how can you?” asked Janet. “He’s 
running away!” 

“Then we got to run after him!” decided 


On the Trail 227 

Dick. “We took Gassy and we got to bring 
him back.” 

“Same as like when your mother borrows 
something from next door,” remarked Mary. 
“You got to bring it back. Is that what you 
mean?” 

“Sure,” murmured Sam. “Come on, Dick. 
We’ll have to run fast to catch up to him—he’s 
almost over to the road already.” 

A road, leading to the woods, ran at the foot 
of Feldman’s lane, and it was toward this road 
that Gassy was heading, still kicking his heels 
up in the air, shaking his head from side to 
side and with his tail and mane fluttering in 
the wind. 

Dick and Sam started off together, side by 
side, like two racers. Dick looked back to 
where his sister and Mary were standing. 

“You girls better go back home,” advised 
Dick. “Maybe we’ll be a long time catching 
Gassy. And you’d better—now—you’d better 
tell mother what happened,” he added, speak¬ 
ing as though he did not like to say what he 
said. 

“Oh—tell mother!” gasped Janet. “You 


228 Two Wild Cherries 

mean about us taking the horse and how he ran 
away?” 

“Sure we got to tell!” declared Dick, more 
firmly now. “Mr. Feldman may come home 
and think his horse is stolen and somebody’s got 
to tell him if we don’t get back in time. Mother 
or daddy will tell.” 

“Yes, but what will mother say when I tell 
her—she’ll say it was our fault,” murmured 
Janet. 

“Well—it—now—it’s got to be told!” sighed 
Dick, taking a long breath, as he sometimes 
did when he first got into the bath tub of 
water. 

“Maybe we can get Gassy back before Mr. 
Feldman comes home,” suggested Sam. 
“Come on, Dick, let’s hurry before he gets out 
of sight.” 

“And I’ll go tell mother,” offered Janet. 
“You ought to come with me and help tell, 
Dick ’cause it was you let Gassy get away.” 

“Well, I can’t go home and tell, and go after 
the horse, too!” declared Dick. 

“No, I guess that’s so,” agreed Janet. “Well 
—all right—I’ll tell. But I know what mother 
will say—and Grandma, too!” 


On the Trail 


229 

''She’ll call us wilder than ever,” announced 
Dick grimly. But it could not be helped. 

They certainly were Wild Cherries ! 

Jogging along at a dog-trot, Sam and Dick 
made their way down the lane in the direction 
taken by the runaway Gassy. Dick turned to 
see Mary and his sister heading back toward 
the village, and then the boy had another idea. 

"We ought to go back and leave a note for 
Mr. Feldman,” said Dick. 

"Leave a note—what do you mean?” asked 
Sam. 

"I mean about his horse. If he comes home 
now, and sees the stable open, he’ll think some¬ 
body has stolen Gassy.” 

"We could shut the stable door,” said Sam. 

"Well, he’d know as soon as he opened it. 
But if we wrote on a piece of paper that we 
were playing Wild West with Gassy, and he ran 
away and we’re running after him and going to 
bring him back—then maybe Mr. Feldman 
wouldn’t be so mad at us.” 

"Maybe not,” agreed Sam. "All right, let’s 
do it.” 

"You write it,” begged Dick, for Sam was a 
little older. 


230 


Two Wild Cherries 


So Sam, with a stub of a pencil, wrote on a 
piece of scrap-paper he found blowing about 
the yard: 

“Mr. Feldman. We played Wild West 
with Gassy and he ran away but we are 
after him and we are going to bring him 
back. He ran like anything.” 

“Is that all?” asked Sam, when he had read 
the note to Dick. 

“I guess so. But we got to sign it and put 
something else in—you know, like we do when 
we write letters in school. You have to say 
'yours respectfully/ ” 

“How do you spell re-re-spect—” began 
Sam, pausing with the pencil in his mouth. 

“Oh, just put 'yours/ and then a lot of scrib¬ 
bles so it will look like a word,” advised Dick. 
“I don’t know how you spell it.” 

So Sam put a lot of “scribbles” on the bottom 
of the note. Then he and Dick signed their 
names, fastened the bit of paper on the door of 
the junkman’s house and once more started off 
on the trail of Gassy. 

By this time the horse was out of sight, so 


On the Trail 


231 


fast had he trotted after that bee-sting. But 
the boys knew the road down the lane and 
into the woods and thought they would soon 
come upon the animal peacefully cropping grass 
beside the highway. 

However when they turned from the lane 
into the road, Gassy was not even there in 
sight. The boys looked up and the boys looked 
down, but they did not see the bony steed. 

‘‘Where do you s'pose he's gone?" asked 
Sam. 

“I don't know," Dick answered, in a tired 
and discouraged voice. “We got to keep on 
looking, though." 

“Same as when you're trying to catch the 
fellows when we're playing hide-and-go-seek," 
added Sam. 

“That's it," agreed Dick. 

They walked down the road a short distance, 
and then back the other way. But no Gassy 
did they see. 

“S'posin' we couldn't ever find him?" sug¬ 
gested Sam, as they paused to rest. “S'posin' 
he was gone forever ?" 

“Whew!" whistled Dick. He didn't like to 
think of that. 


CHAPTER XXIII 

THE CAMP FIRE 

Janet and Mary walked slowly back over 
the fields, toward the village and their homes. 

“What are you going to tell your mother ?’’ 
Mary wanted to know. 

“Why, IT1 tell her just what happened/' an¬ 
swered the other. “Mother will know what to 
do to get Gassy back." 

“Do you s’pose he’ll ever come back?" Mary 
next asked. 

“Course he will," declared Janet. “If he 
doesn’t, my father will go after him." 

“Maybe the Gipsies will take him," suggested 
Mary. 

“Who; take my father? I guess not!" and 
Janet bristled with pride in her father’s ability 
to keep clear of the Gipsies. 

“No, I mean Gassy," explained Mary. “The 
Gipsies might take Mr. Feldman’s horse.” 

“Why would they take him, Mary?" 

232 


The Camp Fire 


233 


“ ’Cause, Janet, Mr. Feldman’s horse has run 
away and maybe the Gipsies might think he 
didn’t belong to anybody and they’d take him. 
Gipsies take horses wherever they find them, 
my father says. They like horses a lot, Gip¬ 
sies do.” 

“Yes, we saw a lot of horses at their camp— 
Dick and I did—the time we hid in the red 
wagon,” admitted Janet. “But I don’t guess 
they’d take Gassy. But maybe they would, so 
I’ll tell mother.” 

It did not take Mrs. Cherry more than a 
moment to guess, after one look at the faces of 
the girls, that something had happened. And 
it did not need Janet’s excited: “Oh, Mother!” 
to let it be known that it was something unusual. 

“What has happened, my dears?” asked Mrs. 
Cherry. “And where are the boys?” she 
quickly added, for she had seen the four going 
off together some time before. “Are they— 
has anything—” She paused, anxiously 
waiting. 

“Dick and Sam are all right, Mother,” Janet 
replied. “They’re after Gassy,” and then she 
told the story. 

“Dear me! This is too bad!” exclaimed 


2 34 


Two Wild Cherries 


Mrs. Cherry with a troubled look on her face. 
“You never should have taken Mr. Feldman’s 
horse to play Wild West with. But of course 
it’s too late to tell you that, now. I must think 
of a way to get the animal back.” 

“I’ll help get him back if I can,” offered 
Mary, “ ’cause I helped get him away.” 

“No, dear, you needn’t bother yourself any 
more about it,” said Mrs. Cherry. “Run home 
and tell your mother what has happened, and 
say that Mr. Cherry will go after the junk¬ 
man’s horse. Of course if your father wants 
to come he may. Ask him to telephone over 
here when he comes home.” 

“I will,” promised Mary. “Good-bye, 
Janet,” she went on. “I’m sorry it happened, 
and I’ll come and help you hunt for Gassy if 
you want me to.” 

“I guess my father can find him,” Janet an¬ 
swered, and then Mary ran across the lots to 
her house. 

“I hope Dick and Sam don’t stay away too 
late looking for that strayed horse,” murmured 
Mrs. Cherry. 

“What’s that—more trouble?” asked 


The Camp Fire 


235 


Grandma Cherry, who had heard some of the 
talk. “What have the Wild Cherries been do¬ 
ing now?” 

“Oh, mischief, as usual,” sighed the mother. 
“But don’t cry, Janet,” she added, as she saw 
tears in her daughter’s eyes. “I suppose it’s 
like the time Grandma’s cameo pin was lost—- 
it just can’t be helped.” 

“We tried to get Gassy/’ sobbed Janet, “but 
he ran off so fast we couldn’t. But maybe 
Dick and Sam will bring him back.” 

“I’m afraid not,” said Mrs. Cherry, and so it 
proved. For the boys came straggling back 
to the house a little later, tired and worried. 

“Gassy went away off in the woods, and we 
couldn’t find him,” reported Dick. 

“Maybe he’ll go back to his stable himself,” 
said Sam. 

“Mr. Cherry will soon be home and then he’ll 
see about it,” Mrs. Cherry remarked. “You 
go home and tell your folks, Sam. If we want 
your father to help we’ll telephone over.” 

“All right,” answered Sam. “I’m awful 
sorry,” he added, as he hastened home, for it 
was getting near to supper time. 


Two Wild Cherries 


236 

“Well! Well! What next?” murmured 
Mr. Cherry when he heard the news. “What 
will the Wild Cherries do next ?” 

“Don’t make fun of them,” begged his wife 
in a whisper. “They feel sad enough about it 
already.” 

“I’m not making fun of them,” answered her 
husband. “It isn’t anything to make fun over 
—no joke at all! But I wonder what they will 
do next?” 

“It’s hard to say,” replied his wife, with a 
sigh. 

“Well, I suppose I’d better go look for that 
horse, or we’ll have Mr. Feldman here all ex¬ 
cited,” said Mr. Cherry. “I’ll get Mr. Nestor 
and Mr. Ward and we’ll see if we can find the 
animal before dark. Don’t ever do anything 
like this again, Dick and Janet,” he warned 
them. 

“No, we won’t!” they promised. 

Having talked with his two neighbors over 
the telephone, Mr. Cherry arranged to have 
them come with him to search for the missing 
Gassy. 

“Do you want me to come with you and show 
you where he went ?” asked Dick. 


The Camp Fire 


237 


“No, I guess you'd better stay home," his 
father answered. “Just tell me where you last 
saw the horse." 

“He was running into the woods near the 
cranberry bog," explained Dick. “It wasn’t 
far from the Gipsy camp." 

“Urn," murmured Mr. Cherry. “If the 
Gipsies catch that horse we may never see it 
again. However, I may as well get started." 

By this time Mr. Ward and Mr. Nestor had 
arrived at the house. The two men were 
laughing and seemed to think it more of a joke 
than anything else, but to Dick and Janet it was 
very serious. They feared the Gipsies might 
keep Mr. Feldman’s horse, and that their father 
would have to buy a new one. This, Dick 
knew, would cost money. He was thinking of 
offering his father all the money he had saved 
in his penny bank, toward the purchase of a 
new horse, but decided it was best to wait until 
next day. 

“This reminds me of the time I lived out 
West," said Mr. Ward with a laugh as he shook 
hands with Mr. Cherry. “We used to hunt for 
lost horses out there." 

“Did you find them?" inquired Mr. Nestor. 


238 


Two Wild Cherries 


“Not always,” was the answer. “They got 
too far away.” 

When the father of the Wild Cherries had 
left with his neighbors, Dick and Janet 
wandered about the house. They were too un¬ 
easy to settle down and do anything. They 
wanted neither to play nor read. 

Grandmother and Mrs. Cherry sat in their 
chairs sewing, and waiting for the men to 
return. 

“It isn’t as if some children were lost, and 
they were hunting for them,” said Mrs. Cherry, 
after a while. “It isn’t as bad as that.” 

“No,” agreed Grandma. “And yet I sup¬ 
pose the junkman is poor, and it will be a sad 
thing for him if he can’t get his horse back.” 

This made Janet and Dick feel more uncom¬ 
fortable than ever, as they thought of their 
part in causing Gassy to run away. At last 
Dick could stand it no longer. 

Dusk was just falling, and Mrs. Nestor and 
Mrs. Ward came over to call on Mrs. Cherry, 
and also to hear more of the queer story. This 
was Dick’s chance. Seeing his mother busy 
talking to her two neighbors, Dick called to his 
sister: 


The Camp Fire 


239 


“Hey, Jan, come on!” 

“Where ?” she asked, for she saw that he 
had his cap and was edging toward the door. 

“Come on out and I'll tell you,” he answered 
in a low voice. 

On the side porch, where he could not be 
heard by those in the house, Dick went on: 

“We're going to find Gassy!” 

“Where?” gasped Janet. 

“At the Gipsy camp,” said Dick. “That's 
where he is, I'm pretty sure." 

“But if he's there, Daddy and Mr. Ward and 
Mr. Nelson will get him,” objected Janet. 

“Maybe they won’t,” said Dick. “Anyhow, 
if we got Gassy back it wouldn't be so bad for 
us. Come on!” 

“Oh, all right,” Janet agreed, after think¬ 
ing it over for a moment or two. “I'll go. I 
do hope we can get Gassy back.” She turned 
as if to go into the house again. 

“What's the matter ?'* Dick wanted to know. 
“Aren't you coming?" 

“Yes,” his sister answered, “but I'm going 
in and get my jacket. It’s sort of cold.” 

“You don't need a jacket,” retorted Dick. 

“Yes I do, so!” 


24Q Two Wild Cherries 

“Well, get a horse blanket out of the barn 
and wrap that around you. That’ll keep you 
warm. If you go back in the house mother 
may ask where you’re going when you come out, 
and maybe she won’t let us. Get the horse 
blanket; that’ll keep you warm like the time we 
played Indian.” 

“All right,” agreed Janet. 

“I’ll get it for you,” offered her brother, and 
soon the two Wild Cherries were wandering 
off in the gathering dusk, toward the woods 
and the camp of the Gipsies in the cranberry 
bog. 

Dick and Janet were not afraid to be out af¬ 
ter dark. It was not the first time they had 
been on adventures after the sun had gone 
down. Night had no terrors for them, for, 
after all, there is nothing to be afraid of just 
because it is dark. 

Dick pulled his cap well down on his head, 
and Janet wrapped the folds of the old horse 
blanket about her. It took some little time to 
arrange this properly, so there would be no 
trailing ends to tangle in her legs and trip her. 
But at last she was satisfied. 


The Camp Fire 


241 

“Do I look like an Indian, or a Gipsy ?” she 
asked Dick. 

“A little,” he replied, not bothering to turn 
his head to see. His eyes were looking for¬ 
ward—he wanted to catch a glimpse of the 
missing Gassy. 

“S’posing we see daddy, or he sees us?” 
asked Janet, when they were some distance 
from the house. 

“Well—well—we’ll just tell him we came 
out to help him,” said Dick, after a pause. 
“He won’t care, I guess.” 

The children knew a short cut to the Gipsy 
camp, and this way they took—a path across 
the lots and through a clump of trees. It was 
while going through these trees that Dick sud¬ 
denly paused—so suddenly that Janet bumped 
into him. 

“Ugh!” she grunted, her breath being 
knocked out of her for the moment. “What’s 
the matter?” she asked. 

“I see a fire—a camp fire!” whispered Dick. 
“I guess we’re at the Gipsy camp!” 

He pointed to a flickering gleam through the 
trees. Janet saw it now—it was a camp fire, 


242 


Two Wild Cherries 


and dark figures could be seen moving about it. 

“Oh, Dick,” she began in a low voice, and 
then she suddenly gave a wild cry of: “Oh, 
I’m caught! Somebody has caught me! Oh, 
Dick!” 


CHAPTER XXIV 

A NIGHT RIDE 

Dick turned quickly and ran back to his sis¬ 
ter, for he had gone on a little way ahead. 
Out of his pocket he pulled a small flash-light 
he had slipped in when the idea came to him of 
taking Janet off on a search after dark. 

In the gleam of this flash-light the boy now 
saw that no one was near his sister, who stood 
close to a thick bush. 

“What’s the matter?” cried Dick. “No¬ 
body has hold of you! There’s nobody here 
but us. What you hollering about?” 

“Somebody caught hold of the horse blanket 
and nearly pulled it off me!” exclaimed Janet. 
“I could feel ’em pull!” 

Dick flashed his light again. Then he 
laughed. 

“’Tisn’t anything to laugh at!” declared 
Janet, for her feelings were hurt, if nothing 
else. 


243 


244 Two Wild Cherries 

“You aren't caught!" and Dick laughed 
again. “It's just that some briars from the 
bush are tangled in your horse blanket. I’ll 
pull it loose!" which he did with a quick 
motion. 

“Oh," murmured Janet, as she felt the relief 
of the strain. “Well, it felt just 'zactly like 
somebody had reached out from the bushes and 
caught hold of me. And I yelled!" 

“You shouldn't ought to have yelled like 
that," declared Dick, as he switched off his 
flash-light. 

“Why not?" demanded his sister. “I guess 
you'd yell if somebody grabbed you! Why 
shouldn’t I holler?" 

“ 'Cause the Gipsies will hear us coming, and 
we want to surprise 'em!" 

“What for, Dick?" 

“So we can see if they have Gassy." 

“Well, if they have him all we got to do is to 
go up and tell 'em Gassy is Mr. Feldman's 
horse and for them to give him to us and we'll 
take him home—take the horse home, I mean." 

“Yes, but," explained Dick, “maybe they 
want to keep the horse for theirselves. I mean 
themselves," he corrected. “They might think 


A Night Ride 


245 


it was a stray horse and nobody owned it and 
that they could keep it if they found it in the 
woods. And if they heard us coming they 
might hide Gassy.” 

“That's so,” agreed Janet. 

“That’s why I want to sneak up on ’em,” 
went on Dick. “But if you’re going to holler 
all the while—” 

“I guess you’d holler, too, if you thought 
somebody was reaching out of the bushes and 
pulling you,” declared Janet again. 

“But nobody was!” insisted Dick. 

“I thought there was, and it was just as bad 
as if there really was,” his sister said. “But 
I guess nobody heard me.” 

The two Wild Cherries looked toward the 
gleaming blaze. It was still flickering and 
leaping up amid the trees, and the dark figures 
could be seen passing to and fro around the 
camp fire. They had not heard Janet’s cries, 
it /appeared, or, if they had, they paid no atten¬ 
tion to them. 

“We’ve got to go closer if we want to see if 
Gassy is there,” decided Dick. 

“All right,” agreed Janet. She would go 
anywhere Dick did, by day or by night. 


246 


Two Wild Cherries 


“But you don't want to make any more 
noise," the boy warned his sister. 

“I won’t," she promised, wrapping the dan¬ 
gling horse blanket more closely about her. 
“Oh, Dick," she murmured, “do you s’pose 
maybe—now—they have it?" 

“Maybe now they have what?" Dick asked 
in a low voice. 

“Grandmother’s cameo pin. Maybe they 
found it afterward and if we asked them now 
they’d give it to us." 

“I don’t guess they have it," said Dick. 
“Anyhow we’re not after cameo pins now— 
we’re after Gassy." 

“But if we could find Grandma’s pin we’d 
take it; wouldn’t we?" Janet wanted to know. 

“Sure," replied Dick, “but we aren’t going 
to find it." 

“I wish we could," sighed Janet. She felt 
that she would never forget the sad look on her 
Grandmother’s face when it was known that 
the pin was lost. 

Nearer and nearer to the gleaming camp 
fire Dick and Janet made their way. They 
had often played Indians in the woods, and 
could go very silently along a path in the for- 


A Night Ride 


247 

est. They were now on a path leading through 
the clump of trees to the blaze. 

Suddenly one of the dark figures moving 
about the flickering flames threw on more 
wood. There was a brilliant flare for a 
moment, and by its gleam Dick saw 
something that caused him hoarsely to 
whisper: 

“Look, there's the horse! There's Gassy all 
right!” 

Janet looked. There was no mistaking that 
bony frame—those ribs that could almost be 
counted in the firelight—it was Old Ironsides 
the junkman's horse—old Gassy. 

“Oh, it is him," Janet murmured. And then, 
as the fire flared up brighter she added: “But 
look—those aren't Gipsies! Look, Dick! 
They're—tramps!" 

It needed hardly a second look to let Dick 
see that Janet was right. Moving about the 
fire were a number of ragged men—men much 
more ragged than the Gipsies, who nearly all 
wore fairly good clothes. The Gipsies, how¬ 
ever much they wandered about the country, 
were not like tramps. They took pride in look¬ 
ing neat. 


248 


Two Wild Cherries 


“That's right—they are tramps/' murmured 
Dick. 

“And they've got Gassy," added his sister. 
“What are we going to do? Shall we go back 
and tell daddy? He thinks Gassy is at the 
Gipsy camp, and Gassy is here." 

Dick did not answer for a moment. He 
stood there in the shadow of the trees and 
bushes, with Janet beside him, looking toward 
the camp fire of the tramps. The ragged men 
seemed to be cooking something in a kettle over 
the blaze. Now and then their voices could be 
heard—hoarse voices, sometimes laughing, 
sometimes bursting out into snatches of song. 

“Shall we go back and tell daddy?" asked 
Janet. 

“No," suddenly answered Dick in a low voice. 

“What'll we do then?" his sister wanted to 
know. 

“We'll get Gassy and take him back with 
us/' decided Dick. “We can both ride on his 
back. You can sit on part of the horse blan¬ 
ket if you want to, for a saddle." 

“How you going to get Gassy?" Janet 
wanted to know. That was much more im- 


A Night Ride 


249 

portant than whether or not she sat on the horse 
blanket. 

‘Til sneak up there and get him when they 
aren’t looking,” her brother went on. 
“They’ve got him tied to a tree.” 

“What you s’pose they’re going to do with 
him—with Mr. Feldman’s horse?” asked Janet. 

“I guess maybe they think they can sell him,” 
suggested the boy. 

“Listen,” whispered Janet. “They’re talk¬ 
ing about him now.” 

Surely enough, as the children, who had 
crept nearer, listened, they heard one loud- 
voiced tramp ask: 

“What’ll we do with the nag?” 

Janet and Dick had once read a funny little 
verse about an old horse that was called a “nag,” 
so they knew what this word meant. 

“Oh, I guess we can sell him,” another tramp 
answered. “He didn’t cost us anything. Car¬ 
rots found him in the woods.” 

“Carrots,” Dick and Janet decided, must be 
the nickname of a red-haired tramp, who, just 
then, threw more wood on the fire. 

“Yes, we’ll sell the old nag,” laughed Car- 


250 Two Wild Cherries 

rots. “But now the stew is ready. Come on 
—let’s eat.” 

Mingled with the smell of burning wood from 
the camp fire, there came to the noses of the 
children the odor of cooking—it had an appe¬ 
tizing flavor, too, even if the stew of the tramps 
was cooked in a rusty, old, iron kettle. 

“I’ll get the horse while they’re eating,” 
whispered Dick to his sister. 

The eagerness of the tramps to eat the stew 
gave Dick the best chance he could have wished 
for to reach Gassy unseen. The horse was 
tied to a tree, not far from the camp fire, but 
in the shadows now, for the animal had moved 
around. 

Telling Janet to keep very quiet, Dick walked 
on a little ahead of her until he had reached a 
point near the tethered horse. The tramps 
were now busy eating; talking and laughing so 
loudly that the little noise made by the children 
could not be heard. 

Gassy was probably tired of his wanderings. 
He had run away—something unusual for him 
—he had kicked up his heels, he had shaken his 
head; his mane and tail had fluttered in the 
wind. That was enough excitement for any 


A Night Ride 


251 


horse. Now Gassy was ready to settle down. 
He had wandered through the woods and over 
the fields, going whither he wished, until, as 
has been said, one of the tramps found him. 

The camp of the tramps was on the edge of 
the cranberry bog, while that of the Gipsies 
was farther in, and along a different path. 

Carefully Dick reached up and loosened the 
halter rope. It was not the first time he had 
thus freed Gassy, for sometimes Mr. Feldman 
let the two Wild Cherries help him hitch the 
horse to the junk wagon and ride with him. 

Silently Dick began to lead the animal out to 
a place where he and Janet could get on his 
back. The horse did not make any effort to be 
quiet, of course. Gassy stepped on sticks and 
twigs that broke and cracked beneath his feet. 
But the tramps paid no heed to this. They had 
been hearing the tethered animal move about 
since they had caught him, and they supposed 
he was merely doing this now—a sort of rest¬ 
less movement. 

“Have you got him?” whispered Janet to her 
brother as he came out of the bushes around 
the camp fire. 

“Yes,” he answered, in a low voice. “And 


252 


Two Wild Cherries 


here’s a stump we can get on so we can reach 
his back. Spread the blanket on for a saddle 
if you want to.” 

“No, I’m going to keep the blanket on me, 
’cause I’m cold,” Janet said. 

“All right,” agreed her brother. 

A few minutes later the two children were 
on the back of old Gassy, and Dick was 
guiding the animal, as best he could, out of 
the clump of trees by means of the halter. 
The Wild Cherries feared lest the tramps see 
them or hear them, but nothing like this 
happened. 

“Now we’ll ride home and they can take the 
horse back to Mr. Feldman,” said Dick, when 
they had started off on their night ride. 

“Won’t they be s’prised to see us!” exclaimed 
Janet, holding on by putting her arms about 
her brother’s waist, while the old horse blanket 
was draped around her. “Won’t they be 
s’prised, though?” 

“I guess they will,” said Dick, laughing. 
“Go on, Gassy!” he called more loudly now, for 
they were some little distance from the camp 
fire. “Gid-dap.” 

“He gid-daps good; doesn’t he?” asked 


A Night Ride 


253 

Janet, proud of her brother's skill in making 
Gassy trot. 

“Yes, I guess he knows he's going home," 
said her brother. 

Dick knew the way home—it was not the 
first time he had been to this part of the cran¬ 
berry bog after dark. Gassy, too, seemed able 
to pick his path without wandering into the 
underbrush. 

For a time the children rode along in silence. 
The flicker of the fire had died away, and they 
could no longer hear the murmuring voices and 
laughter of the tramps. 

“I guess they'll be surprised, too, when they 
look for Gassy and don't find him!" chuckled 
Dick, as he clapped his heels, like spurs, to the 
bony sides of the junkman's horse. 

“I guess so," agreed Janet. “It's a good 
thing you got him back, Dick." 

“Yes," her brother murmured. 

And then, from somewhere ahead of them, 
the children heard a noise. They saw a flicker¬ 
ing light and the murmur of voices came to 
them. 

“Oh, maybe it's the tramps after us!" gasped 
Janet. 


CHAPTER XXV 


IN THE HORSE BLANKET 

Toward the cranberry bog went the three 
men—Mr. Cherry, Mr. Nestor and Mr. Ward. 

“It's too bad to bring you neighbors out on 
this wild-goose chase,” apologized Mr. Cherry, 
as they tramped on in the gathering darkness. 

“Oh, we don’t mind!” chuckled Mr. Ward. 

“I rather like it,” added Mr. Nestor. “It re¬ 
minds me of the time when I was a boy and 
used to get into mischief myself.” 

“Well, my Wild Cherries seem to get into 
mischief more often and more easily than any 
children I ever saw,” remarked the father of 
Dick and Janet. 

“Well, I guess my boy helped in this trick,” 
said Mr. Ward. 

“And my Mary, too,” went on Mr. Nestor. 
“They’re all alike when it comes to wanting 
fun—children are.” 

“I only hope we get back Feldman’s horse,” 
254 


In the Horse Blanket 255 

spoke Mr. Cherry. “If it’s lost, or if some 
one has taken it away, I suppose I’ll have to 
pay for it. Not that it is worth such a lot of 
money, though.” 

“If there’s a horse to be paid for, we’ll all 
pay our share,” declared Mr. Nestor. 

“That’s right—we’ll all chip in as we fellows 
did when one of us broke a window playing 
baseball,” laughed Mr. Ward. “But maybe 
we’ll get the old horse back. If he’s anywhere 
he’s at the Gipsy camp.” 

“That’s what I think,” said Mr. Cherry. 
“The children seemed sure that he was headed 
toward there.” 

There was an excited gathering of the dark- 
skinned men and women—children, too—about 
the three searchers when, a little later, they 
reached the Gipsy camp in the cranberry bog. 

“Ah, here is father of two children who haf 
ride with me,” murmured Kobah, who, it ap¬ 
peared, had come back to join his friends, after 
having gone away for a time. 

' “Your children are not here—they did not 
come here,” said Madame Deborah, the 
fortune-teller, coming from her tent to stand 
in the light of the Gipsy camp fire. 


256 Two Wild Cherries 

“No, we didn’t come about the children this 
time, nor about a missing cameo pin,” said Mr. 
Cherry with a smile. “Dick and Janet are 
safe at home (he really thought they were) and 
I fear the cameo of my mother is gone for 
ever. But this time we come about a horse.” 

“A horse?” cried Kobah. “You want buy a 
horse? I haf some good ones I sell you— 
vera good—vera cheap. You should come 
with me, gentlemans—” 

“No! No! We aren’t buying horses,” an¬ 
swered Mr. Cherry. “We’re looking for a 
runaway horse belonging to a junkman. My 
children, and another boy and girl, played Wild 
West with it.” 

Then he explained about the running away 
of Gassy. 

“But he isn’t here,” said Madame Deborah. 
“We have no horses here but our own. Is it 
not true?” she asked, appealing to the circle of 
Gipsy men crowding around her. 

“It is true,” they murmured. 

A quick look about the camp proved the truth 
of this. Gassy had not come to the Gipsies, 
and Mr. Cherry and his two friends thought 
the wandering tribe was speaking the truth 


In the Horse Blanket 257 

when nearly all the members said they had seen 
nothing of the runaway animal. 

“I saw an old bony horse in the woods,” said 
Tamma, the Gipsy boy. 

“You did?” cried Mr. Cherry. “Which way 
was he going?” 

“Over there,” and Tamma pointed toward the 
other edge of the cranberry bog. 

“That may have been Gassy,” said Mr. 
Ward. “I don’t believe there is much use 
searching any further to-night,” he added. 

“Nor I,” added Mr. Nestor. “If you people 
find that horse, please bring him to Mr. 
Cherry,” he requested. 

“We shall do,” spoke Madame Deborah. 

“If she’s a real fortune-teller she ought to be 
able to find that lost horse for us,” said Mr. 
Nestor in a low voice to his two friends, as 
they left the Gipsy camp. 

“She knows about as much of where Gassy is 
as I do,” laughed Mr. Cherry. “But they may 
find the animal in the morning. It’s too dark, 
as you say, to look any more now. Feldman 
knows me and I guess he won’t make much of 
a fuss. Dick says he and Sam left a note on 
his door.” 


258 Two Wild Cherries 

"Yes,” agreed Sam’s father. “It sounds like 
a story out of a book,” he chuckled. 

So Mr. Cherry and the others left the Gipsy 
camp, to return home, and you can imagine how 
surprised Mr. Cherry was when his wife met 
him at the door, greatly excited, and cried out: 

“The children are gone!” 

“Where?” 

“I don’t know. Didn’t they follow you?” 

“No,” answered Mr. Cherry. “We went on 
to the Gipsy camp and have just come from 
there. We didn’t see Dick or Janet!” 

“Oh, dear!” sighed his wife, almost ready 
to cry. “Where can they have gone?” 

“We’ll have to get right after them!” her 
husband exclaimed as he heard the story of the 
missing children. “I guess they, too, went to 
look for the horse.” 

“We’ll help you find them,” offered Mr. 
Ward and Mr. Nestor, whose wives had gone 
back home after a brief visit at the Cherry 
house. 

Once again, off into the darkness, tramped 
the three men. By this time Dick and Janet, 
riding Gassy, were on their way home through 


In the Horse Blanket 


259 


the woods. They had halted on hearing voices 
and seeing a flickering light in the clump of 
trees. 

“Do you s'pose it's the tramps coming to take 
Gassy away from us?” whispered Janet, keep¬ 
ing a firm hold around her brother's waist. 

“No,” he answered. “The tramp camp is 
back of us, and the light is in front of us.” 

“Oh,” began Janet, “maybe it's—” 

But at that instant a voice called through 
the woods: 

“Hello, Janet! Hello, Dick! Where are 
you?” 

“Oh, it's daddy!” cried Janet in joyful tones. 

“He's looking for us,” added Dick. “Here 
we are!” he called more loudly. “And we've 
got Gassy!” 

A few moments later the three men—for it 
was their voices and flashing lantern the chil¬ 
dren had heard and seen, were greeting Dick 
and Janet. 

“What in the world are you trying to do?” 
asked their father, as he saw the two up on 
Gassy's back, Janet wrapped in the old horse 
blanket. 


26 o 


Two Wild Cherries 


“We just went out to see if we could find 
Gassy, and we did,” explained Dick. “The 
tramps had him.” 

“Yes, we heard there was a camp of tramps 
in these woods, soon after we started out to 
find you,” said Mr. Cherry. “That's the rea¬ 
son we headed for this place after we came 
back from the Gipsies. Well, I guess this ends 
the adventures of the night.” 

But it did not. The best was yet to come. 

“You two might as well stay up there, on 
the horse,” said Mr. Cherry, when explanations 
had been made. “We'll lead him to our house 
and there you can get off. Then we’ll send 
Gassy back to his owner. And don't ever take 
him again.” 

“We won't,” promised Dick and Janet. 

Mrs. Cherry came running out to meet them 
when she heard voices and footsteps approach¬ 
ing. 

“Oh, Dick and Janet! How could you give 
us so much trouble?” she asked, somewhat 
sadly. “You shouldn't have gone out alone 
after dark.” 

“We wanted to help find Gassy, and we did,” 


In the Horse Blanket 261 

said Dick proudly, as he slid off the ridge pole 
of Gassy’s back. The horse was so bony that 
his back looked like the peak of a barn roof. 

“And he isn’t hurt a bit,” added Janet, as she 
was helped off the animal, her horse blanket 
shawl still wrapped around her. 

As she slid to the ground the little girl gave 
a cry of pain, and put her hand to her left leg. 

“What’s the matter ? Are you hurt ?” asked 
her mother quickly. 

“Something sharp stuck me!” explained 
Janet. 

“It must be one of the thorns from the briar 
bush,” said Dick. “She thought somebody had 
hold of her,” he added with a laugh. 

“It felt so,” explained Janet. “But this is 
a bigger prick. Oh, it’s sticking me again!” 
she cried. “Ouch!” 

She put her hand down in the blanket that 
was tangled about her legs. She fumbled for 
a moment and then, with a cry of delight and 
surprise, she brought out—Grandma Cherry’s 
missing cameo pin! 

“Look! Look!” cried Janet. “I’ve found 
it! IVe found Grandma’s pin!” 


262 


Two Wild Cherries 


It needed but a glance to make certain of this. 
In the light of the lantern carried by Mr. 
Cherry, the golden pin gleamed brightly. 

“Where was it?” demanded Dick. “Where’d 
you find it?” 

“In the horse blanket!” cried Janet, as she 
passed the jewel to her mother. “I ’member, 
now. I was playing dress-up in the horse 
blanket, and I fastened the pin on. Then I 
took the blanket off and I must have forgotten 
about the pin.” 

“And it’s been on this old blanket ever since!” 
said Mother Cherry. “Just fancy that!” 

“Most remarkable!” murmured Grandma 
Cherry, as she came out to see what had caused 
all the excitement. “Oh, I am so glad to get 
my cameo back!” she added. “Now I am very 
happy!” 

“You aren’t any happier than I am!” laughed 
Janet. 

“It’s a good thing Gassy ran away, or maybe 
we’d never have found Grandma’s pin,” de¬ 
clared Dick. 

“Yes, I suppose that’s right,” said Mr. 
Cherry. “For the old blanket might have hung 
there for years and never have been moved, or 


In the Horse Blanket 263 

taken out again. You are very lucky, Janet.” 

“Yes, I guess I am,” and she laughed happily. 

Grandma pinned her precious pin at her 
throat, and smiled gladly. 

“We’ll take Gassy back to Mr. Feldman,” of¬ 
fered Mr. Nestor and Mr. Ward. “Then you 
folks can stay home and celebrate the find.” 

“Thank you,” said Mr. Cherry. 

“It really is like a story in a book; isn’t it?” 
murmured Janet as she and Dick went in the 
house. “Oh, I’m so glad Grandma has her pin 
back!” 

The Gipsies were glad, too, when they heard 
the news next day, for they were honest folk, 
and did not like to have resting on them the 
suspicion that one of them might know some¬ 
thing about the missing cameo. 

As a special favor Dick and Janet were al¬ 
lowed to go to the Gipsy camp with their father 
when he told about the cameo pin having been 
found. 

“That is good news,” said Madame Deborah, 
and she gave the children some more spangles 
like those they had picked up in the woods at 
the place where Tamma, as a joke, had hidden 
their lunch basket. Tamma winked and 


264 


Two Wild Cherries 


blinked his black eyes at the Wild Cherries; 
and, some time later, he and Dick became good 
friends. Tamma taught Dick many secrets of 
the woods, and showed him how to whistle in 
imitation of the wild birds. 

Mr. Feldman only laughed when he returned, 
two days later and learned that his horse had 
been taken away, had been lost and had been 
found again. 

“It’s all right,” the junkman said, smiling. 
“What I care so long as I have him back again, 
and he isn’t damaged? It’s all right! I give 
you Wild Cherries a ride when you like it.” 

“Thank you,” murmured Janet and Dick. 

And so their adventures, for a time, at least, 
came to an end. But there were others in store 
for them. Janet and Dick could not keep quiet 
very long, and you may be sure they lost little 
time in finding something else to do. 

What it was I shall tell you about in the next 
book of this series, which will be called: “Two 
Wild Cherries in the Country; or How Dick 
and Janet Saved the Mill.” I hope you will 
like to read that story. 


THE END 

































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